And Now for Something Completely Different

It seems the day got away from me, as it appears the weekend might well also, so a totally unrelated, 3D printer story. 

Precious granddaughter (also known as PGD) officially turned into a teenager last month as the clock ticked over to 13.  One of the things we picked off her Christmas list this most recent Christmas was a Taylor Swift CD.  I have no idea how common that is for 13 year olds, but it was easy to do and she was happy to get it.  

Around the middle of January, I broke a plastic measuring teaspoon and thought "why not just print one?" so I found myself looking for models on a few sites.  That's when I stumbled across this, on the public print library at Prusa:

I asked Dear Daughter-in-Law if she thought PGD would like this, got an enthusiastic yes, downloaded the two files and since this was pretty much two full months before her birthday, promptly put it aside. 

When the calendar started getting into March, I setup the printer and did the large piece on the left and then went on to the more intricate piece on the right.  As the printer started getting closer to the end of the print, I could tell it was messed up in a way I'd never seen.  It looked like this:

Compare it to the view on the right in previous picture.  I have no idea why it turned some solid curves into dashed lines, but it clearly did.  The problem turns out to have been the Slicer software I was using, which is from Prusa, like the cookie cutter itself.  

I pretty quickly switched to another slicer software package I have and that one was much closer to the original.  I've since downloaded updated versions of both Slicers.

The two pieces were Priority Mailed to PGD and the first batch of cookies were had a couple of weeks ago.  To borrow/butcher a line, "a splendid time was guaranteed to all" and received by them.

Small Space News Story Roundup 56

A disjointed couple of stories: they don't really go together, but who says they have to? 

The Highly Improbable Approach to launching satellites is gone

Remember the SpinLaunch, the company that planned on spinning satellites in a ground-based centrifuge on the order of 330 feet in diameter until they reached a velocity that could fling them into orbit?  The last post I have about them is from October of 2022.  As we talked about a few times back then, their big and fundamental problem was their flings are harder on the payloads than a typical rocket launch.  The quote I can't forget is the one that went, “It’s a very gentle 10,000 g.”  That's an oxymoron! 

It turns out that SpinLaunch sorta went quiet not long after that test.  You could say they disappeared, for all I heard.  This week they've announced a rather complete change in direction.  They're going to go back to regular rockets. 

"The launch market is relatively small compared to the economic potential of satellite communication," [CEO David] Wrenn said. "Launch has generally been more of a cost center than a profit center. Satcom will be a much larger piece of the overall industry."

The source article at Ars Technica goes into a bit of the details.  I have to say I'm not particularly convinced they've set up a good business plan and have a good chance of success.  I didn't think they had much of a chance with their centrifuge-as-launch-vehicle approach, either.  

The SpinLaunch test vehicle at the end of what appears to have been their last flight test.  It's hard to get a good scale from this video, but it appears to be on the order of 6' long - about the height of the men digging it out of the ground. Screen capture from their video (obviously).

A mission to retrieve Vanguard 1 from the orbit it has been in since 1958

That's 67 years ago.  America had just been shocked by the Soviet Union launching Sputnik 1 in October of 1957.  The newborn American space program had been hard at work trying to get to orbit and the frustration from being beaten to orbit by them was palpable.  It hurt more later in the year when the U.S. Navy's Vanguard rocket failed as the booster toppled over and exploded on its first attempt to put a US satellite into orbit. 

Lately, there has been an effort going to design a mission to retrieve the old satellite and bring it back down; there will be examinations of it for various reasons and then it will probably go into a museum.

The space race was just getting started, and the US Army was the first organization to reach orbit with  Explorer 1 on January 31, 1958.  Vanguard 1 reached orbit on March 17, 1958 as the second U.S. satellite.

The US Naval Research Lab is still the owner of the miniature metal ball of Vanguard 1, and while Explorer 1 reentered in 1970, Vanguard 1 is still in orbit. 

Today, the satellite is in an elliptical orbit with its perigee roughly at 410 miles (660 kilometers), swinging out to an apogee of approximately 2,375 miles (3,822 kilometers) from Earth, with a 34.25 degree inclination.

A team that includes aerospace engineers, historians and writers recently proposed "how-to" options for an up-close look and possible retrieval of Vanguard 1.

A mission like this is probably more complicated than it sounds, due to the satellite not having been designed with any thought given to capturing it a later date.  You can be sure there are no features on the little satellite to grab.  Add to that the fact the it's a small satellite at 3 pounds that's a 5.9 inch diameter aluminum sphere with a 36 inch antenna span.  It would be a delicate, 'handle with care' mission.

Vanguard I satellite, a component of the Vanguard Project, is a small aluminum sphere designed to take part in the International Geophysical Year (IGY) — a series of coordinated observations of various geophysical phenomena during solar maximum, spanning July 1957 through December 1958. (Image credit: NASA)

A hearing has been scheduled for the confirmation of Jared Isaacman as NASA Administrator

The committee announced late April 2 that it will hold a confirmation hearing for Isaacman on April 9 at 10 a.m. Eastern. 

A Little Starship Flight Test 9 News

While SpaceX has not concluded its investigation of the loss of Flight Test 8's Starship, and hasn't nailed down a date for FT-9, they have announced that FT-9 will feature the first reuse of a previously flown SuperHeavy booster.   

The most visible sign of SpaceX making headway with Starship's first stage—called Super Heavy—came at 9:40 am local time (10:40 am EDT; 14:40 UTC) Thursday at the company's Starbase launch site in South Texas. With an unmistakable blast of orange exhaust, SpaceX fired up a Super Heavy booster that has already flown to the edge of space. The burn lasted approximately eight seconds.

This was the first time SpaceX has test-fired a "flight-proven" Super Heavy booster, and it paves the way for this particular rocket—designated Booster 14—to fly again soon. SpaceX confirmed a reflight of Booster 14, which previously launched and returned to Earth in January, will happen on next Starship launch With Thursday's static fire test, Booster 14 appears to be closer to flight readiness than any of the boosters in SpaceX's factory, which is a short distance from the launch site.

SpaceX says 29 of the 33 Raptor engines on Booster 14 will be flight proven, so while not exactly their goal of "no-touch reuse" it's a giant leap in that direction.  At liftoff, SuperHeavy is the most powerful rocket ever built with nearly twice the thrust of the Saturn V that got people to the moon -  16.7 million pounds of thrust.  Without the Starship, Booster 14 itself is 232 feet tall.  

Reuse has come to be accepted as the way things should be, and that shouldn't be a surprise.  Nobody would seriously talk about flying a commercial airliner once and throwing it away.  Spacecraft may fly with smaller safety margins than a car or commercial airliner; that is, the difference between forces the rocket is calculated to be able to survive, and those that it will be exposed to during a real flight, but that's because of the brutality of the mission.  In the car or the Airbus, the extra weight of stronger designs is much less of a burden to live with than with a rocket.  

The first time SpaceX reused a Falcon 9 for a paying customer, it was practically a year after the initial flight and many inspections and tests to ensure everything still behaved as it should.  That mission was in 2017.  They now have over 425 flights of reused boosters.  Reusing B14 is the best way to verify that they knew what they're looking for as they inspected and retested it.  

SpaceX hasn't released a date for the next flight of B14 with its new Starship, but it's still early in the buildup to FT-9 and more likely to be in May than April.  The ship assigned to FT-9 is still in its factory at Starbase.  There have been no test firings of the ship, so it will need to roll out to a test stand for its own static firing tests.  Once that's accomplished, they typically move the ship back to the factory for more work, inspections and finishing touches, before returning it to the pad.  

Booster 14 during Flight Test 7, January 16, 2025. Image credit: SpaceX

I hadn't thought of Fram2 this way

Stephen Greene, "Vodkapundit" at PJ Media, surprised me with an observation about the Fram2 polar orbiting mission that never occurred to me.  It's so obvious when you read that it really resonates.  

"...To boldly go where no man has gone before" launched every episode of Star Trek that I watched in reruns as a kid, but Monday night I watched as two men and two women did it for real aboard a Crew Dragon spaceship that put human beings into a polar orbit for the first time ever.

Son of a biscuit, he's right and we've just been calling it an orbital mission, just like all the other privately-run manned missions to orbit that we've seen.  Except it really isn't.  Nobody has ever done a mission that orbited over one of the poles every half orbit. 

He then goes on to say a few words about the crew members and each of their backgrounds before adding another poignant note:

None are former fighter pilots, NASA astronauts, or government employees of any kind. All show the kind of daring that would make Captain James T. Kirk proud.

Even dedicated space buffs were a bit taken aback when news of Fram2 reminded us that human beings had never flown a polar orbit before. You might wonder why, but Fram2's five-day mission has a stellar rationale. 

What's the rationale?  Nobody has made big deal about it, but while they're bringing a lot equipment for various scientific experiments, perhaps the most important experiment is that they're going to be exposed to the Van Allen belts - through holes over the magnetic north and south poles.  Nobody has been exposed to these belts since the Apollo program, and even the Apollo astronauts avoided the worst doses by transiting quickly through the Belts.  

Fram2 won't fly through the most dangerous parts of the Van Allen Belts but they'll fly through them every orbit, enough to gather data. 

For those of us who grew up in the start of the "space age," watched Mercury, Gemini and Apollo as they happened, this is turning into the space age we always expected to see, just delayed until later.  Still, while we don't know how much they're spending on this mission and the things they're doing, we know that it's all being funded by one man, Chun Wang.  I know he has been called a billionaire, and haven't seen an estimate of his net worth, but between Wang and Jared Isaacman with his Polaris program missions, it's clear that someone who can spread around a few hundred million dollars doesn't have much trouble getting into space if they want to.  Those with less to spread around now can take suborbital spaceflights, like Blue Origin's New Shepard flights. 

To let Stephen Greene have the last words:

It won't be long before millionaires will enjoy short stays aboard luxury space stations in low Earth orbit, just like the ISS but much more comfy. After that, maybe a brief "spacation" won't cost much more than a trip to Disney World. 

The complete whiteness of Antarctica is seen from SpaceX's Dragon during the first-ever human polar orbit during the Fram2 mission. (image credit Fram2/Chun Wang via News13 in Central Florida)

How Bad Was Starliner's Flight? I Had No Idea

Eric Berger at Ars Technica has put up a summary of an interview he had with Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams yesterday at Johnson Space Center in Houston.  It's the deepest, most informative thing I've come across about the Starliner Crewed Flight Test mission; the story is both riveting and a high pucker factor.  While the two spent most of the day giving five to ten minute interviews. Berger has a closer relationship with Butch Wilmore and they ended up talking for a half hour.  Berger writes:

I have known Wilmore a bit for more than a decade. I was privileged to see his launch on a Soyuz rocket from Kazakhstan in 2014, alongside his family. We both are about to become empty nesters, with daughters who are seniors in high school, soon to go off to college. Perhaps because of this, Wilmore felt comfortable sharing his experiences and anxieties from the flight.  

The story is definitely worth your time to read, and as I usually do, I'll pass on some excerpts to try to whet your appetite for the story.  

The story starts after launch and their first night in orbit in an unexpectedly cold Starliner capsule.  As they're approaching the Space Station, you'll probably recall they lost some thrusters and the ability to control Starliner.  They knew they should dock with the ISS and felt that they'd be safer there, but they didn't know that their Starliner would hold together or if more failures would come.  As Starliner's thrusters failed, Wilmore lost the ability to move the spacecraft in the direction he wanted to go. 

He and his fellow astronaut, Suni Williams, knew where they wanted to go. Starliner had flown to within a stone's throw of the space station, a safe harbor, if only they could reach it. But already, the failure of so many thrusters violated the mission's flight rules. In such an instance, they were supposed to turn around and come back to Earth. Approaching the station was deemed too risky for Wilmore and Williams, aboard Starliner, as well as for the astronauts on the $100 billion space station.

But what if it wasn't safe to come home, either?

"I don't know that we can come back to Earth at that point," Wilmore said in an interview. "I don't know if we can. And matter of fact, I'm thinking we probably can't."

In the lead-up to this moment, Butch remembered talks he had with Boeing leaders before the mission. 

"Before the flight we had a meeting with a lot of the senior Boeing executives, including the chief engineer. [This was Naveed Hussain, chief engineer for Boeing's Defense, Space, and Security division.] Naveed asked me what is my biggest concern? And I said the thrusters and the valves because we'd had failures on the OFT [uncrewed flight test] missions. You don't get the hardware back. (Starliner's service module is jettisoned before the crew capsule returns from orbit). So you're just looking at data and engineering judgment to say, 'OK, it must've been FOD,' (foreign object debris) or whatever the various issues they had. And I said that's what concerns me the most. Because in my mind, I'm thinking, 'If we lost thrusters, we could be in a situation where we're in space and can't control it.' That's what I was thinking. And oh my, what happened? We lost the first thruster."

The story gets worse from there.  Wilmore adds: "And this is the part I'm sure you haven't heard. We lost the fourth thruster. Now we've lost 6DOF (6 Degrees of Freedom) control. We can't maneuver forward. I still have control, supposedly, on all the other axes."  

Now they simply could not control the Starliner to the degree they needed to.  The two of them realized they were in a very precarious situation, and it literally was just barely good enough to only probably not get them both killed. There was no need to talk about that with each other; they're both experienced enough as astronauts to know what the situation meant.  That's when the mission control in Houston came up with the scariest solution.  

Turn the entire system of thrusters off and back on again.  Really.  And some of them started working again.

Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams at the docking port entry to the ISS, soon after their June 6th arrival at the ISS. Image credit: NASA

I'll leave it there as it's fairly close to the actual docking with the ISS and the rest of the story. 

Temporary Interruption

I beg your pardon for an interruption in regular blogging tonight as I have something I need to tend to.

We have a special election tomorrow and I just haven't gotten to the point that I'm comfortable with any of the candidates.  Time for a last attempt at more digging.  

The main reason for the special election is that our current state Representative has reached her term limit, and as I'm sure I've mentioned before, the biggest impact of the state's term limits is that the term-limited person runs for the office down the hall.  In this case, our representative is running for the state senate and while that may ordinarily be thought of as a step up, or even a "promotion," it goes both ways.  Senators will run for the house, or pretty much any office.  Their ability to win seems to largely come down to name recognition. 

As a result, she's running against three people I know nothing about, and another three people I know nothing about are running for her old job.  The current campaign fad has been to mail out oversized post cards printed (in color!).  I probably have five pounds of those cards.  The buzzwords this year are being endorsed by Trump, being MAGA, or common sense.  There's some talk about the other headlines like exporting illegal aliens, or keeping boys out of girls sports.

My standard election picture, featuring Kang and Kodos from the Simpsons. 

The other thing I say all the time is this old quote:  Preparing for an election is like cleaning out the litter box.  It's a disgusting, revolting task that exposes you to all sorts of dirty, filthy things you'd rather never see, but if you don't do it, the job gets even more disgusting and revolting.

It Took Longer than Expected to Get to This

It took longer because I was expecting Isar Aerospace to launch their Spectrum booster from Andøya Spaceport, in Norway last Monday, the 24th and instead they repeatedly scrubbed or held until this morning (Sunday, March 30).  The mission was over within 40 seconds.

It's still too early in the aftermath of the failure for Isar to have explained much, but the rocket visibly behaved improperly almost from the moment it left the launch pad.  When the rocket started to pitch downrange to start transferring some velocity into that direction, other videos make it obvious that the booster isn't well-controlled and appears to be wobbling around.  The mission ends with the booster landing in water adjacent to the launch pad and exploding. The booster appears to be off - or just barely running

Spectrum is closer in size to Rocket Lab's Electron than SpaceX's Falcon 9, with a payload to orbit of one metric ton (2200 lbs), compared to Electron's payload of closer to 660 lbs.  Spectrum's payload is closer to the Electron's than the Falcon 9's capability, though. 

There was no payload for this flight.

Spectrum has yet to reach orbit, but Isar has already signed an agreement with the Norwegian Space Agency for the rocket's first commercial missions in which it will launch the Arctic Ocean Surveillance (AOS) program satellites by 2028. It's unclear if today's anomaly will affect that timeline.

Crew-9 Commander who gave up seat for Starliner crew gets next Mission

Last August, NASA decided the way to deal with Starliner's issues was to fly the capsule back down autonomously without its crew of Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams.  They would then come back by cutting the crew coming up on the Crew-9 mission down to two astronauts so that there would be two seats for Butch and Suni to return in after working as the other half of Crew-9. 

The two astronauts who were cut from the original Crew-9 mission were Commander Zena Cardman and mission specialist Stephanie Wilson.  It was announced yesterday, Friday 3/28, that Zena Cardman would be assigned as the commander for Crew-11 which is targeting this coming July to replace the current Crew-10.  So far, NASA has not announced whether Stephanie Wilson has been assigned to a new mission and if so, which one.

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 members stand inside the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on Nov. 13, 2024. From left are Mission Specialist Kimiya Yui from JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), Commander NASA astronaut Zena Cardman, Mission Specialist Oleg Platonov of Roscosmos, and Pilot NASA astronaut Mike Fincke. Image: NASA/Josh Valcarcel

You'll note in the caption (copied from SpaceflightNow) that the photo is dated from last November 13, 2024, and I can see that the digital photo's file is dated Nov. 13.  I take that to mean the decision to put Cardman into the Commander's role was made by then.  

These four will be on the space station when the ISS marks the 25th anniversary of continuous human presence on the orbiting outpost. Expedition 1 docked to the station on Nov. 2, 2000.
...
Crew-11 will be the first spaceflight for both Cardman and Platonov, who were selected by their respective space agencies in 2017 and 2018.

When you remember that these shifts all originated because of the problems with Starliner, it's a reminder that the Starliner program is deeply troubled.  NASA is still working out the testing that it would take for them to be comfortable with certifying Starliner.  The agency recently posted to one of their blogs that while progress is being made, the “major in-flight propulsion system anomalies” seen during last summer's flight still remain as outstanding items and likely will until “further into 2025, pending the outcome of various ground test campaigns and potential system upgrades.” 

A new testing campaign is being planned for the spring and summer, which will take place at the White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico. That’s the site where Boeing and NASA attempted to troubleshoot the propulsion issues during the Starliner mission as they debated whether it was safe to return with crew.

“Testing at White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico will include integrated firing of key Starliner thrusters within a single service module doghouse to validate detailed thermal models and inform potential propulsion and spacecraft thermal protection system upgrades, as well as operational solutions for future flights,” NASA said. “These solutions include adding thermal barriers within the doghouse to better regulate temperatures and changing the thruster pulse profiles in flight to prevent overheating.

“Meanwhile, teams are continuing testing of new helium system seal options to mitigate the risk of future leaks.”

Add to that relatively optimistic-sounding summary that the next Starliner test flight isn't defined yet and probably can't be defined until all the work is done, tested as well as it can be tested without being in space, and a major step will be deciding if it's worth testing with a crew.  I can easily see a test flight not being possible until well into 2026.  Does the ISS last until 2030 as now being talked about, or does it need to be de-orbited more in keeping with Elon Musk's suggestion of 2027?  If it's that date, Boeing may never fly a fully operational Starliner mission before the demise of the ISS.

Monday's Fram2 Privately Run Orbital Mission

No Earlier Than Monday evening, March 31, at 9:29 PM EDT (also known at Tuesday, April 1, at 0129 UTC), SpaceX will launch the Fram2 mission from LC-39A at the Kennedy Space Center.  This mission is an entirely private mission that will be the first manned mission to orbit over the north and south poles. This will be the sixth mission for booster B1085 and the fourth for Crew Dragon Resilience (C207).  Space.com does an overview of the mission today, with a little more info on the mission and bio info on the crew.

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

Chun Wang is the mission commander, and the Maltese Cypto-billionaire is the one who came up with the mission concepts, and the crew - as well as the funding.  The crew appears to all be friends who have been working together for at least a few years.  

"I've been interested in space from a very young age … and for the first time, a private person can plan and design their own very personal mission," Wang told CNBC last year. "We are trying to make the door wider and make people feel that everyone can have their own very personal space mission."

Norwegian filmmaker Jannicke Mikkelsen, last on the right in the photo, will serve as the mission's vehicle commander.  Her specialty is photography and cinematography in difficult environments like the Arctic and the open ocean. 

Mikkelsen has worked with Sir David Attenborough to shoot 360-degree documentaries underwater.
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"As a filmmaker, I have long dreamed of these possibilities in fiction. Now, step by step, commercial mission by commercial mission, we are turning those dreams into reality," Mikkelsen said in a statement on the Fram2 website.

Rabea Rogge, who will be the mission's pilot, is an engineer and scientist from Berlin who specializes in robotics and polar research. She's currently working on a PhD in marine technology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

Rogge will make history on Fram2 as the first female German astronaut.

Rogge's mission bio states: "She has always been fascinated by extreme environments, studying them to understand the limits of our world — and to push beyond them. Her work includes leading a satellite mission and researching ocean robotics in the Arctic, reflecting her commitment to advancing technology in both polar regions and space."

Australian polar explorer Eric Phillips will serve as Fram2's mission specialist and medical officer. With a long career as an adventurer and guide, Phillips has led ski expeditions to the North and South Poles.  

Phillips is co-founder and former president of the International Polar Guides Association, as well as co-creator of the Polar Expeditions Classification Scheme, a grading and labelling system for extended polar trips. He's written about and produced a number of documentaries on his expeditions.

"Having spent much of my adult life in the polar regions, this is an incredible opportunity to view the Arctic and Antarctica from space — in particular Antarctica, which will be fully lit at this time of year," Phillips said in a statement on the mission website.

This will be the 6th private mission that SpaceX has flown: three have been for Axiom Space - named AX-1 through AX-3 - and all of which flew to the ISS.  They launched another two missions for Polaris Program: the Inspiration4 which launched in September 2021 and was the first all-private orbital spaceflight.  That was followed by last September's Polaris Dawn mission, the first privately conducted spacewalk.   Axiom's AX-4 mission to the ISS is currently set for NET May.

Space is Hard - So Is Getting There

Word started to get around yesterday evening that a Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo module was damaged in transit to the Cape Canaveral launch site.  The actual incident that caused the damage hasn't been talked about, but while the damage occurred three weeks ago, it took some questions and followup from Ars Technica to get the story that the Cygnus module isn't flyable; at least for now. 

Built by Northrop Grumman, Cygnus is one of two Western spacecraft currently capable of delivering food, water, experiments, and other supplies to the International Space Station. This particular Cygnus mission, NG-22, had been scheduled for June. As part of its statement in early March, the space agency said it was evaluating the NG-22 Cygnus cargo supply mission along with Northrop.

On Wednesday, after a query from Ars Technica, the space agency acknowledged that the Cygnus spacecraft designated for NG-22 is too damaged to fly, at least in the near term.

The ISS program office has said that the Cygnus might be repairable and usable, but it won't be ready for a June launch.  The mission has been renamed NG-23 and is currently "penciled in" with a No Earlier Than date of "this fall."  

There are only two American spacecraft currently accepted for flying cargo missions to the Space Station: Northrop Grumman's Cygnus  and SpaceX's Cargo Dragon.  Both have been flying routinely since the start of commercial cargo services.  The next cargo mission to the ISS has been scheduled to be a Cargo Dragon currently set for Monday, April 21, well before dawn.  

As a result of the damage to the NG-22 Cygnus and the possibility of a prolonged impact to the necessary deliveries, NASA is modifying the cargo on this cargo flight.  The agency says it will "add more consumable supplies and food to help ensure sufficient reserves of supplies aboard the station" to the Dragon vehicle.  Given how these cargo drones seem to be loaded "to the gills" that implies that some stuff may be left on the ground to make room for more food and "expendable" supplies.  

This raises an interesting possibility: making Starliner's next test flight a cargo delivery.  As has been talked about recently here, there's discussion of whether Starliner's next mission should be crewed or not.  Using Starliner's test flight presents a very reasonable alternative, not crewed, but able to test everything Starliner needs to do as it ferries cargo to the ISS.  The drawback is that Starliner would be competing with SpaceX crew missions for docking ports, and there would be limited time frames when the vehicle could fly.

File photo of the Cygnus about to be grabbed by the robotic arm of the ISS so that the ISS crew can guide it to the docking port.  

Before you ask, the Sierra Space Dream Chaser is another cargo ship that had been scheduled for its next flight this May but isn't ready to fly.  It will be launched by the ULA Vulcan mentioned yesterday, but there isn't one available to launch Dream Chaser.  That looks to be later in the year than that "NET this fall" NG-23 Cygnus mission.  

As a result of Dream Chaser's delays, Starliner's problems, and the dropped Cygnus, NASA is now almost entirely reliant on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft to get its astronauts to the space station and to feed them.

Crew Dragon remains the only vehicle certified by NASA for human flights to the station. On the cargo side, Northrop Grumman is developing a new rocket with Firefly, but in the meantime, has been using the Falcon 9 to launch Cygnus. With Cygnus now sidelined for at least half a year, every non-Russian vehicle flying to the space station will be built by SpaceX.

Details of exactly what happened to this Cygnus are limited, except that indented paragraph just above (direct quote from Ars) used the word "dropped."  Perhaps we should say, "Space is hard and so is concrete."

Space Force Certifies ULA's Vulcan to Fly for Them

The US Space Force announced today, Wednesday March 26, that it has certified United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Rocket for their National Security missions. 

"Assured access to space is a core function of the Space Force and a critical element of national security," said Brig. Gen. Panzenhagen, program executive officer for Assured Access to Space, in a news release. "Vulcan certification adds launch capacity, resiliency, and flexibility needed by our nation’s most critical space-based systems."

This marks the end of a multi-year process to achieve this milestone, which can only happen after the development and at least one successful test flight, but generally two successful flights.  Before the first test flight, an explosion of the upper stage on a test stand while being tested in northern Alabama on March 29, 2023, delayed the first flight of Vulcan by several months. Then, in October 2024, during the second Cert flight of the rocket, a nozzle on one of the Vulcan's two side-mounted boosters failed. The mission still met all of its goals but watching an engine nozzle fall off in flight has an effect on confidence.

This nozzle issue, more than five months ago, compounded the extensive paperwork needed to certify Vulcan for the US Department of Defense's most sensitive missions. The military has several options for companies to certify their rockets depending on the number of flights completed, which could be two, three, or more. The fewer the flights, the more paperwork and review that must be done. For Vulcan, this process entailed:

• 52 certification criteria
• more than 180 discrete tasks
• 2 certification flight demonstrations
• 60 payload interface requirement verifications
• 18 subsystem design and test reviews
• 114 hardware and software audits

It seems that the indented paragraph (not the bulleted items just above this) implies that they might have been able to reduce that workload by doing a third certification flight but perhaps didn't have another Vulcan planned for it, so not in inventory.  

You might recall that last year, a senior Air Force official expressed concern about ULA's launch rate and their ability to scale up its manufacturing capabilities and reach a high cadence of launches.  

Before this year, Bruno said the company aimed to launch two dozen rockets in 2025 (a mix of Atlases and Vulcans), but has since reduced that estimate to about a dozen. Even this number seems aspirational should Vulcan not fly its initial mission before this summer.

While both CEO Bruno and other company officials have said that it would be doable after the certification process is complete, so now, it's time to find out.  In the article about first quarter launches on Friday the 21st the only ULA launch was an Atlas V listed simply as "No Earlier Than 1st Quarter 2025."  We're just about done with the first quarter, but April still seems possible.  This will be followed by the first two Vulcan national security launches, USSF-106 and USSF-87. According to the Space Force, the first of these could occur during the coming "summer."  It seems they're unlikely to launch a dozen this year.  Unless they have a large inventory of Atlas Vs and the payloads.

Vulcan's Cert-2 Flight Liftoff, October 4, 2024. Image Credit: United Launch Alliance

It's a Good Day for asking "What The F***?"

Doing my usual search through a few space-related web sites to try to find something interesting to pass on, I found two things that made me ask, "what?"  One's a story ready to read, the other is an invitation to a conference (read "invitation to" as "advertisement for") which led to another topic.  To be fair, at least one is about something that makes sense. I'll leave it to you to decide if any of it makes sense.  

The story is headlined, "Space pirates already have their sights set on the 'high seas' of Earth orbit. Can we stop them?"  Space Pirates?  Like Johnny Depp's Pirates of the Caribbean series except in orbit?  Is Depp going to be there?  What about Keira Knightly and Orlando Bloom?  ISTRC Keith Richards was in one of those movies.

WTF are they talking about?  They're saying, "there's gold in them thar hills!"  Or in that thar vacuum.  The growth of space as a commercial resource opens it as a prospect for misdeeds, corruption, piracy, and war.  There are vehicles up there, satellites, telescopes, all sorts of valuable stuff.  

The Center for the Study of Space Crime, Policy, and Governance (CSCPG) is looking into the risks of piracy in space and solutions to this potentially devastating economic and legal problem.

"Now is the time to start thinking and talking about mitigating the threat of piracy in space," said Marc Feldman, executive director of the CSCPG. "As we like to say, and please forgive me, Leon Trotsky, but you may not be interested in space piracy, but space pirates are interested in you …"

As you might suspect, a book has been written.  Director Marc Feldman of the CSCPG teamed up with a specialist in cybersecurity, technology, and compliance named Hugh Taylor to produce "Space Piracy: Preparing for a Criminal Crisis in Orbit."  "We are arguing that it's already started, in very early stages, with attempts to hack satellites," Taylor told Space.com. "However, we think that the increasingly commercial nature of space will result in attacks, physical and digital, on space assets, probably starting with disruptions of Earth-based space assets like launch facilities or ground stations," he said. 

Once you start thinking of it in his directions, it becomes easier to see Feldman's thoughts.  What if a hostile force could take over a TV satellite, in a Geosynchronous orbit?  It wouldn't have to be a pirate out in Geo orbit, if they could hijack the satellite over its uplink.  Imagine something big like the World Cup of soccer or the Super Bowl of American football is getting ready to happen, it's going to be sent live around the world via satellite, and the satellite(s) get hijacked.  The real satellite owner gets a message saying something like, "if you don't transfer BFP (Big Pile) of money to this account, the link goes away.  And we can do this to anything on your satellites."

Hey... wasn't there a James Bond movie villain who scooped satellites out of orbit, and stole a Gemini capsule out of orbit?  Killed an astronaut doing a spacewalk?  I wonder if Feldman watched that movie recently.

Image credit: I have no idea. I got it here and it wasn't credited.  I'm pretty sure it was a mid-'60s Bond movie, but I don't recall which one.

The other one is just a phrase that I've never heard and had to question the heck out of what it could mean.  The phrase is Space Sustainability.

Sustainability is a buzzword you see in lots of places, but I couldn't understand what it means in context. Ordinarily, it seems to be used for things like some animal we depend on, like beef cattle, chickens or pigs, or it could mean things like environmental features, things like fresh water that we depend on, or just simply love having.  

But space isn't a thing.  I think of space as being empty.  It's the nothing between things not the things themselves.  It turns out, the idea is keep it empty; keep it from filling up.  They want to preserve the empty.  OK, that makes some sense. 

This session will explore critical topics such as active debris removal, on-orbit servicing, space traffic coordination, and data collection, as well as the policy roadblocks. What can governments do today? How can industry step up? And what international cooperation is needed to keep space open for business?

It turns out that NASA started a Space Sustainability Division last September to put all of their sustainability operations into one group.

Small Space News Story Roundup 55

Artemis II Booster now stacked

There has been talk about the SLS being dropped going forward.  Some of those rumors include the entire Artemis program being dropped, and more.  In light of that it might be that the last SLS launch vehicle that will ever fly was stacked over the weekend.  If, indeed, it will ever fly. 

Working inside the iconic 52-story-tall Vehicle Assembly Building, ground teams used heavy-duty cranes to first lift the butterscotch orange core stage from its cradle in the VAB's cavernous transfer aisle, the central passageway between the building's four rocket assembly bays. The cranes then rotated the structure vertically, allowing workers to disconnect one of the cranes connected to the bottom of the rocket.
...
Finally, ground crews lowered the rocket between the Space Launch System's twin solid rocket boosters already stacked on a mobile launch platform inside High Bay 3, where NASA assembled Space Shuttles and Saturn V rockets for Apollo lunar missions.

It's not fully stacked - the adapter to the Orion spacecraft and the Orion itself are not in place.  There is a large number of tests that need to be done to verify things before a cone-shaped adapter can be placed on top of the core stage, followed by the rocket's upper stage, then another adapter, and finally the Orion spacecraft that will be home to the four-person Artemis II crew for their 10-day journey around the moon. 

Will it fly?  The tyranny of numbers and the "sunk cost fallacy" that so many congress critters seem to follow may well push them to fly Artemis II.  Artemis II has been delayed so many times (like all Artemis and SLS hardware) that in December of '24, we were warned the planned September '25 launch was looking more like another six month slip to the spring of '26.  It seems to be a situation where the errors of the past have wiped out any chance of fixing the hole the program dug itself into. 

Four RS-25 engines left over from NASA's Space Shuttle program will power the SLS core stage poised here between and above the two solid rocket boosters. Credit: NASA/Frank Michaux

Isar Aerospace: Weather Caused this morning's scrub

Isar's Spectrum rocket launch that had been scheduled in a window that opened at 7:30 AM EDT (1130 UTC) was scrubbed due to "unfavorable winds" and the launch recycling began.  It didn't show up until late in the afternoon on NextSpaceflight, but the launch is rescheduled for the same three hour window tomorrow. 

An interesting side note to this launch is that the Isar Spectrum is the largest German rocket since the V-2 used widely in WWII and The Battle of Britain, mostly as a weapon of terror because it didn't have functional guidance and just fell where it was at the time.  The first launch from Cape Canaveral was a V-2 that had a second stage made by adding another missile called the WAC Corporal into system called Bumper.  NASA's history says, "WAC possibly stood for Without Attitude Control, since the rocket had no guidance system."  Seriously.  It's in that linked story.  

Maybe I've Been Triggered

Maybe I've been triggered because I'm sensitive to the topic, maybe I'm sick of the same old ... stuff, but I saw something supposedly coming from Bobby Kennedy and the MAHA folks.  I've spent hours looking for it between yesterday and today but couldn't find it again.  Which makes me doubt talking about this, but it's a slow news day.  

What I'd swear I saw was a list of things that they're supposedly interested in looking into the health effects of the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP).  Coming from a career in radio design - transmitters, receivers and all the major subsystems in them - I've heard absurd fear of radio signals for so long, I start subconsciously twitching when I come across a new story.  

Let's start here.  Most people don't think this way but every minute of every day you live immersed in a constant soup of radio signals.  Forget about your phone or your home WiFi router, the things you usually think of, there are sources from almost audio frequencies through broadcast radio, shortwave broadcasters, TV over the air, police radios, taxi radios, weather radios and on and on up into the microwave spectrum and beyond that into what are called millimeter waves that you're exposed to every day.  Some of them all day, some of them irregularly or intermittently.  Unless you take absurd steps to prevent this - forget the tin foil hat, it's more like a tin foil 100% cover - you live in this every day.  If you turn off your phone, you turn off what it produces; the signals from every other phone and every cell tower are still there.  

So let's think of it in another way the most people won't.  The first law of Toxicology - the study of toxins or poisons is "The Dose Makes the Poison" and the guy who started the field said a big enough dose makes something toxic that isn't usually thought of that way.  The classic example is oxygen; not just nontoxic but essential to life, as in without it we die.  At a high enough partial pressure, it's toxic.  That's why really deep sea diving doesn't use compressed air but exotic mixes of other gases and oxygen.  

A big enough "dose" of radio will burn you.  Since radio is just very, very far infrared light, it immediately brings to mind a laser.  Lasers are high power lights and dose is the power.  Can high power radio hurt you?  Absolutely!  That's why there are limits imposed on the power that systems can produce that people can be exposed to.  The power required to hurt someone depends somewhat on the physical size of the radio waves; the allowable power for a system to expose the general public to is lowest around the FM broadcast band because people are similar in size to 1/4 wavelength at some point in the FM band, depending on how they're sitting; 234/freq. in MHz gives 1/4 wave, so 2.66 ft @ 88 MHz and 2.17 ft @ 108 MHz.  

The saving grace of all that radio soup we live in is that it's all low power by the time it gets to us.  Radio signals drop off in power very fast.  It drops to 1/4 of the power every time you double the distance from the transmitter.  A relationship I've shown many times here is a bit less accurate than the fully rigorous calculations, but it's easy to stick in a spreadsheet somewhere and use it when you need it.  

Path loss in dB = 37 dB + 20log(f) + 20log(d)  where f is the frequency in MHz and d is the distance in miles.  

What's a dB?  It's a decibel, a power ratio.  A loss of 3 dB is 1/2 the power, -6 dB is 1/4, -9 dB is 1/8.  So imagine you're calculating how much power you're exposed to from an FM broadcaster in town. 

Path loss in dB = 37 dB + 20log(100) + 20log(10)  where f 100 MHz and d is 10 miles

Path loss is 97 dB

Now 97 dB is a lot of loss, but FM broadcasters often start out with high powers.  I have a local FM station here in town that says they start out at 1000 watts.  Us Receiver guys refer to that as 60 dB more than 1.00 milliwatt or +60 dBm transmit power (dB is ratio, dBm is a power ratio to 1 milliwatt).  Taking away 97 dB of that gives me -37 dBm.  That's a perfectly usable signal to a radio receiver, but it's 3.2 millivolts RMS or .0032V on digital voltmeter. That's not going to hurt anybody or anything.  

So let's do the same thing with HAARP, according to their documents.  The frequency is 2.7 to 10 MHz, and the distance depends on where you are with respect to the transmitter.  Essentially the distance is up to the ionosphere and out to your location.  The ionosphere covers a fairly wide range of altitudes, but at most is in the "couple of hundred miles" range (photo below) and the altitude will drop out of the equations for a path to the center of the country.  Some web searches show the center of the US is just outside of Lebanon, Kansas, and that it's close enough to say 3300 miles from HAARP.

Path loss in dB = 37 dB + 20log(10) + 20log(3300)  where f 100 MHz and d is 10 miles

Path loss is 127 dB

The power of HAARP is variable, the antenna pattern can change plus there are other differences depending on what the experiment is. That said, 3.6 Million Watts is 95.6 dBm and after the path loss the level is close to previous example - a bit stronger at -31.4 dBm or closer to 6mV, .006V.  

Atmospheric layer heights from Wikipedia

I tried to pick numbers for the distance that weren't too far from or too close to Alaska to be reasonable, but it's a bit surprising that these numbers ended up being within a couple of dB for a local, low power FM station and HAARP.  Bottom line is I still see nothing about that situation that's remotely scary.  As a general rule, the only time a radio signal can be dangerous is if you're close enough to touch the transmitter. 

Former NASA Astronauts Endorse Jared Isaacman

A group of 28 former astronauts have gathered to endorse Jared Isaacman for his appointment as NASA Administrator, and to call for the senate to complete reviewing him for the position as soon as possible.  

“We believe that Jared Isaacman is uniquely qualified to lead NASA at this critical juncture. As an entrepreneur, pilot, and having commanded two groundbreaking space missions, he brings credibility and capability to make a difference now,” states the letter, signed by 28 former NASA astronauts and posted to social media March 21 by one of them, Garrett Reisman.

Garret  Reisman's letter is in a post to BlueSky you can read here.  

Earlier this week I was wondering about when Isaacman's confirmation hearings were going to be held.  The last things I heard were that it was looking to be the end of February after the bigger names, more controversial people who were going to be first; RFK Jr., Pete Hegseth, Kristi Noem and others that are looked at more politically.  The last time I posted anything about his nomination was mid-February.  

President Trump announced his decision to nominate Isaacman in early December, but the nature of this process is that pretty much nothing happens until after inauguration.  And then some more time.

His nomination is under the jurisdiction of the Senate Commerce Committee, which has yet to schedule a hearing to consider the nomination. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), chairman of the committee, said in February that the committee was “still waiting for the paperwork to be completed” before scheduling a hearing.

Of the 28 astronauts who signed the letter, I recognized a few of the names and they seemed to largely be Shuttle-era astronauts along with some from the space station era, with an interesting exception: Rusty Schweickart, who flew on Apollo 9 in 1969.  Wikipedia says Rusty was born in 1935, so he'll turn 90 this October.

SpaceNews adds:

Other notable signatories include Bob Cabana, who after his astronaut career was director of the Kennedy Space Center and NASA associate administrator; Bill Readdy, who became associate administrator for space operations; and John Grunsfeld, a veteran of several Hubble repair missions who later served as associate administrator for science and, during the 2024 election, backed a group called “Space Cadets 4 Harris” that supported Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

They also note that former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine endorsed Isaacman at the Satellite 2025 conference held March 11.  

Bridenstine responded by heaping praise on Isaacman. “I think Jared Isaacman is going to be an amazing NASA administrator,” he said. “I think he’s got all the tools to be what could be the most consequential NASA administrator given the era in which we live in now.”

Jared Isaacman, who goes by the name "Rook" in every other reference to him on this blog, commanded two SpaceX private astronaut missions, Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn in September.  You can see his shirt is embroidered "Rook Isaacman" on his right in this picture.  Credit: Polaris Program

As the 1st Quarter of 2025 runs out

As we close in on the end of the first quarter of 2025, we find we have more missions penciled in as No Earlier Than (NET) March or the first Quarter than seem to be getting close to reality.  NextSpaceFlight.com shows 11 launches marked with a March launch date and time or as NET March or NET First quarter.  That's not surprising; there are far more ways to miss a launch goal than to make one, so some of the hoped-for launches are likely to not get off the ground.  The launches aren't all from the US, but the majority are.  The first one, however, is unique and has been talked about here before: Isar Aerospace, a German company, is to launch their Spectrum rocket from the Andøya Rocket Range in Nordland, Norway.  It's the top left square in this graphic:

Screen capture assemblage from NextSpaceflight.com - the bottom right has an April expected launch so it doesn't count. 

Isar announced on Monday March 17 that the Norwegian Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) issued a launch operator license to the company for its Spectrum rocket, launching from Andøya Spaceport in northern Norway.  They didn't specify an expected launch date and time, but noted, “maritime notices are in effect daily from 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. local time for the launch.  The launch was stated in that linked Space News article as Thursday (March 20).  I see tonight (upper left hand square in this graphic) that it's currently penciled in for Monday at 7:30 AM EDT (1130 UTC). 

This launch is going to be A Big Deal, as we talked about in the piece here back on February 22. 

The launch will not only be the first flight by Isar Aerospace but will also be the first vertical orbital launch attempt from Europe, excluding Russia. Virgin Orbit performed an air launch from Spaceport Cornwall in the United Kingdom in January 2023, deploying its LauncherOne rocket from a Boeing 747 aircraft, but a problem with the rocket’s second stage prevented it from reaching orbit.

The launch attempt will be a major milestone for both the company and the European space industry as it seeks to expand its launch capabilities. “In today’s geopolitical climate, our first test flight is about much more than a rocket launch: Space is one of the most critical platforms for our security, resilience and technological advancement,” Daniel Metzler, chief executive and co-founder of Isar Aerospace, said in a statement. “In the next days, Isar Aerospace will lay the foundations to regain much needed independent and competitive access to space from Europe.”

Isar Aerospace's first Spectrum rocket on the pad at Andøya Spaceport ahead of its upcoming launch. Credit: Isar Aerospace

There are some interesting launches in that first graphic.  Alpha is planning to launch on Wednesday, 3/26, from Vandenberg at 9:37 AM EDT; Rocket Lab about two hours later (11:30 AM EDT) from New Zealand.  There's another Rocket Lab launch from Wallops Island, Virginia, but there's no specific date or time - it just says NET 1st quarter - the same as an Atlas V by ULA carrying Project Kuiper (Amazon's orbiting internet satellites) from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.  An interesting one that I know absolutely nothing about is from Australia.  A company called Gilmour is launching their Eris rocket's TestFlight1, "NET March 2025" from an Orbital Spaceport in Australia. 

Don't forget that the Fram2 orbital mission by SpaceX and private investor Chun Wang, to be the first manned flight ever to orbit over the Earth's poles.  Currently set for NET March 31 at 11:20 PM EDT from the Kennedy Space Center, LC-39A. 

Edit 3/22/25 at 8:25 AM:  To correct in agreement with the first comment and add the word "nothing."

SpaceX About to Set a new Re-use Record?

If all goes according to the stated plans, Thursday night local (PDT) time to early morning Friday EDT SpaceX will set a new record for the shortest turnaround time for a booster between flights.  By a large enough margin that they don't even need to do it tonight. 

A Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to lift off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base Friday at 2:49 a.m. EDT (0649 GMT; 11:49 p.m. on March 20 local California time), on the NROL-57 mission for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).

This rocket's first stage also lofted the SPHEREx space telescope and PUNCH solar probes for NASA on March 11, according to a SpaceX mission description. An on-time liftoff for NROL-57 would therefore be the booster's second in a little over nine days, besting the previous Falcon 9 turnaround record of 14 days. [Bold added. - SiG]

If the launch goes off as scheduled, that's just nine days and four hours since the SPHEREx mission.  That means if they don't launch for another five days, they can still set their own record by beating the previous record of 14 days.  It's not like they compete with any launch provider other than themselves for records like this.  Nobody else is routinely reusing orbital boosters besides them at anywhere near the pace they're running. 

The booster for this mission, B1088, will be flying its fourth mission so it currently wears the name B1088.3, which will increment to B1088.4 if the launch is successful.  The booster is scheduled to land at the Vandenberg landing zone, not offshore on a recovery drone ship. That'll be approximately 7-1/2 minutes after launch.  The mission itself is for the NROL and called NROL-57.

NROL-57 will be the eighth launch of the NRO's "proliferated architecture," which the agency describes as "a new paradigm for assets the NRO is putting on orbit."

That paradigm features "numerous, smaller satellites designed for capability and resilience," NRO officials wrote in an NROL-57 mission description.

As you'd expect with the National Reconnaissance Office, the description there doesn't say much.  The common rumor is that the "proliferated architecture" network is thought to consist of the special version of Starlink satellites that SpaceX is providing to the NRO as "Starshield." 

Note that the previous seven proliferated architecture missions have all launched from Vandenberg on Falcon 9 rockets.

Obligatory pretty picture of a Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base, SLC-4E. Same launch pad, different mission. Image credit: SpaceX 

EDIT 3/21 at 0920 to add:  The mission lifted off as scheduled at 0649 UTC setting the re-use record as expected.

In the Wake of Crew-9 an Awkward Question

Now that Crew-9 has completed its mission, Crew-10 is on the Space Station and arguments about whether the Starliner Crew Flight Test (CFT) astronauts were stuck, stranded or pick a word are receding into completely meaningless, we come back to an old question. 

What about Starliner? 

During the various things I watched over the last few days, I think it was during the NASA press conference after the Crew-10 launch, someone asked if Boeing was still committed to Starliner and getting it fixed and flightworthy.  The answer was that Boeing had universally said yes; from the program officials working on improving Starliner to relatively new CEO Kelly Ortberg.  

Space.com is trying to understand the current situation and the directions things are heading.  They describe things as muddled.  

"We're in the process of looking at that vehicle, looking at the helium system," he added. "We've got some candidate seals that we're going to replace. We'll get into some testing here over the summer timeframe with what we call an 'integrated doghouse' at White Sands [a NASA test facility in New Mexico]."

"Doghouse" is the term NASA and Boeing use for the thruster pods on Starliner's service module. The module sports four such pods, each of which houses 12 thrusters — five of the relatively powerful "orbital maneuvering and control" (OMAC) class and seven "reaction control system" (RCS) thrusters, which are used for finer adjustments, such as those needed during docking.

The thruster issues and helium leaks were the essence of the problems with Starliner last June.  Five of the 28 RCS thrusters failed to operate properly during Starliner's approach to the ISS.  The mission team eventually was able to bring four of those five affected ones back online.  In the months since the return to the ground, the failure has been linked to overheating.  Repeated thruster firings can apparently warm up the doghouses so much that some of their Teflon seals bulge, affecting propellant flow.  

This theory is informing adjustments to Starliner's design and operations going forward, according to Stich. [Steve Stich, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program]

"I think we have some changes we need to make to the way we heat those thrusters, the way we fire those thrusters, and then we can test that on the next flight," he said.
...
"We need to make sure we can eliminate the helium leaks; eliminate the service module thruster issues that we had on docking," Stich said.

At this point, whether the next Starliner test flight will be manned or not is undecided, but either way, NASA wants the Starliner to be completed and capable of being a manned mission if that's decided at the last minute.  Fully flight ready, exactly like the capsule would be for a regular mission,  "to have all the systems in place that we could fly a crew with," as Steve Stich put it.  

Remember, from the Ars Technica summary of the return flight in early September that while Starliner successfully returned to the ground, it wasn't a trouble-free flight.

A couple of fresh technical problems cropped up as Starliner cruised back to Earth. One of 12 control jets on the crew module failed to ignite at any time during Starliner's flight home. These are separate thrusters from the small engines that caused trouble earlier in the Starliner mission. There was also a brief glitch in Starliner's navigation system during reentry.

It seems that little progress has happened with Starliner in the six months since the capsule returned without its crew.  The problems that affected the mission appear to still be there, and NASA is stubbornly holding onto its original plans for the crew transport systems.  

NASA plans to certify Starliner for operational, long-duration astronaut missions shortly after this next flight, if all goes well.

"We really need to get Boeing into a crewed rotation," Stich said. "Butch and Suni's return on Dragon, to me, shows how important it is to have two different crew transportation systems, the importance of Starliner and the redundancy that we're building into human spaceflight for our low Earth orbit economy."

Starliner docked to the ISS during June 2024's flight. Image credit: NASA

A Gorgeous Day to Return to the Ground

I'm sure virtually everyone has heard the Crew-9 mission came to a successful conclusion today, returning to splashdown into the Gulf of America off the Florida Panhandle at 5:57 PM EDT today. 

Crew-9 undocked from the ISS and began its nearly 17 hour voyage home at 1:05 AM EDT this morning (Tuesday).

“On behalf of Crew-9, I’d like to say it was a privilege to call the station home, to live and work and be a part of a mission and a team that spans the globe, working together in cooperation for the benefit of humanity,” said NASA astronaut and Crew-9 commander Nick Hague as he and his crew drifted away from the orbiting outpost.

“To our colleagues and dear friends who remain on the station … we know the station’s in great hands. We’re excited to see what you guys are going to accomplish.”

Crew-9 Commander Nick Hague and Roscosmos Cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, who flew to the station last September 28, returned to Earth after having logged 171 days in space.  Their crewmates, NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, returned with 286 days in space.  As you'll remember that's thanks to the decision to send Starliner back to the ground unmanned.

SpaceX's Crew Dragon "Freedom" with the Crew-9 and Starliner astronauts on board splashes down under four parachutes off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida on March 18, 2025. (Image credit: NASA+)

It was really quite a pretty day in the Gulf up there today and there are eye-popping videos from lots of sources.  The skies were a beautiful blue, and photogenic as can be.  The four parachutes visible in this photo fall to the Gulf so slowly it almost looked like animation.  A pod of dolphins came up to the capsule to see what all the commotion in the water was from.  

So what's next?  Well, for the ISS, it's business as usual.  Crew-10 will be in place for the regular more-or-less six months.  Work will resume.  For the crew, they'll be given some extra time off - particularly Butch and Suni with their nearly 10 months in space.  There's always time off for recuperation, getting used to being in normal gravity and such.  

SpaceX looks to be ready to launch a privately-funded, crewed mission we first talked about last August - the first manned flight to go into a polar orbit, called Fram 2. NextSpaceflight shows the launch currently scheduled for Monday Mar 31, 2025 at 11:00 PM EDT.

The four commercial astronauts of the Fram2 mission pose inside a Dragon spacecraft training capsule at SpaceX facilities in Hawthorne, California. From left to right: Eric Philips, Rabea Rogge, Jannicke Mikkelsen and Chun Wang, leader and funder of  Fram2's mission.  He's the equivalent of Jared Isaacman on Polaris Dawn and his missions.  Image credit: SpaceX