Russia's Luna-25 Mission Is In Trouble
This morning (7:10 AM US Eastern time) while attempting to execute an orbit change into the desired orbit to land from, Russia's Luna 25 probe encountered a problem around the required engine burn. Information is almost nonexistent; the Russian space agency Roscosmos was very sparse in it's statement.
However, during the planned maneuver “an emergency situation occurred on board the automatic station, which did not allow the maneuver to be performed with the specified parameters,” according to a translation of the statement. “The management team is currently analyzing the situation.”
That's it. While the Space News (.com) take is that we don't know with certainty that this will interfere with the attempt to land, it seems likely at the very least to affect the scheduled orbit it would attempt to land from unless the problems are either very minor or very quickly resolved.
Artist's rendering of Luna-25 on the moon. Image credit: Roscosmos
Falcon 9 Leads the World in Mass to Orbit
Hardly a surprising headline given the frequency at which they launch. The only aspect that's even a little surprising is by just how much they lead the world.
According to this week's Rocket Report it's not even remotely close.
According to data from BryceTech, SpaceX lofted 214 metric tons of payload into orbit in the second quarter of 2023. Its next closest competitor was the main contractor for China's space program, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, with 23 metric tons. All told, SpaceX lifted more than three-quarters of mass—primarily Starlink satellites—into orbit during the quarter.
This is for the second quarter of the year alone, and SpaceX lifted over 9 times the mass to orbit as China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC). The numbers for the first quarter weren't exactly the same (at the same BryceTech link), but SpaceX was closer to 10 times the mass to orbit as CASC.
A sobering statistic is how the US launch industry other than SpaceX fared. The total mass put into orbit by all other US companies was 5 metric tons in the second quarter, about 21% of the mass CASC launched and 2% of SpaceX.
Some Even Smaller Miscellaneous Stories
Preparation for the Crew 7 mission to the ISS is proceeding nominally. The Crew Dragon capsule Endurance was transported to pad 39A on Thursday (August 17). Meanwhile, the Crew 8 crew started training for their mission (most likely early '24) in California. Crew 7 is scheduled for August 25th, at 3:49 a.m. ET (07:49 UTC). This will be the 3rd flight for Endurance after having launched Crew 3 and Crew 5.
They're currently planning two missions on calendar Tuesday (east coast time); the mission from Vandenberg is at 2:04 AM EDT and is the one that was originally intended for Friday (yesterday) morning EDT but postponed due to weather. With Hurricane Hilary expected to bring Tropical Storm conditions to the area, weather might remain a factor. The second of the two is from Cape Canaveral SFS, SLC-40 at 8:47 PM EDT Tuesday.
Sucks about Russia's lander. Sounds like the Lunar Defense Shield is functioning as intended. Darned aliens or space Nazis!
ReplyDeleteAs to SpaceX, not surprising. Not getting tired of the milestones.
A perigee of -0.5m ruined their day...
DeleteWhen my brother was in Space Command some dipstick lieutenant set up a burn and got the sign wrong, resulting in the perigee being the bottom of the Indian Ocean.
Reminds me of that mission to Mars that was lost because of screwing up metric and English units.
DeleteOr the Ariane 6 using the flight computer from the Ariane 5 systems, and couldn't handle the inputs from the gyro system because the registers were too small and they got overflows!
DeleteButbutbut...the Russians are the bestest and most competent scientists and engineers on the planet!!!
ReplyDeleteIt must be true, because every day I read about how they're wiping the face of the earth with the Ukrainian bumpkins, having killed their opponents eleventy times already, as we enter Day 541 of their Special Military Operation.
This almost sounds like their space program works about as well as their army, or their modules on the ISS.
Almost as if the usual massive Russian propaganda undergirded by monumental understatement is the only thing they do reliably.
Bummer.
Thanks for the chuckle Aesop. Never change, the internet needs humor.
DeleteIt gets better: the new nickname for this is Kaputnik.
DeleteHas space ever been safe and easy? Has American efforts even post NASA had failures?
DeleteI didn't want to list the painful mistakes I'm aware of. NH lost a teacher in one event.
That would be touching, except for the fact that landing things on the moon safely is so 1960s technology.
DeleteThis is merely a documentation of how far they've fallen.
And if the assclowns who ran the shuttle program, and killed nearly five times as many people as the entire 1960s space program did, had possessed half the competence of the folks who ran the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo programs, all the shuttles would have been retired safely with zero losses, and parked outside museums now.
Part of that is budgetary, but most of it is sheer inertial bureaucratic incompetence.
That's why Space-X is burying NASA as the fossil it is.
I've had the opportunity recently to see and compare engineering drawings from Russia in two different eras: late Soviet period, circa mid 1980s, and more recent ones from the last few years. While never great, the ones dating to the 1980s are much better done than the modern ones, even with the advances in CAD Tech over the last 30 years.
ReplyDeleteI worked in the late 1990s on a proposed module for the ISS, the Interim Control Module, because NASA had serious doubts as to whether Russia could get their Zveda service module working and wanted an alternate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interim_Control_Module
We were all shocked when the Zveda actually worked(more or less), and the ICM was put into long term storage. Russian quality has really declined since then...
I will say one thing on behalf of the Russians, though: even at their worst, they are slightly better than Mexican engineers and designers.
So Luna 25 cratered - ultimately reflecting a deficiency in Russian systems engineering. The Russians don't lack any particular component science or engineering. Their astronomy is the same as ours - and is available worldwide. Their rocket engines work so well we have used them for decades. Their guidance systems are up to the task. But something in their systems engineering failed - that is the fabric that ties all the component pieces together. The US - especially our space and defense companies - excel in systems engineering. It is a discipline that rarely gets the credit it deserves.
ReplyDelete