Small Space News Story Roundup 41

Unusually soon after Roundup 40 but a couple of stories that are short but important. 

Germany's Leading Rocket Developer Loses First Booster in Static Firing.

The dramatic first. 

The German private rocket developer, Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA), has been making steady, regular progress on getting ready for their first orbital launch attempt. That was stopped this week when the first stage of the inaugural RFA rocket was destroyed in a static-fire test Aug. 19 at the UK's SaxaVord Spaceport in the Shetland Islands. 

RFA was quick to announce that nobody was hurt, the pad had been evacuated and secured for this potentially dangerous test, as it should have been. The video of the explosion was a little rough to find yesterday but several show up in the searches today.

Two other German companies, HyImpulse and Isar Aerospace, are also developing orbital vehicles but have not yet set launch dates although Isar has reportedly hinted at a launch "later this year."

SpaceX Rarely Surprises, But...

They launched a load of Starlink Satellites from Cape Canaveral SFS, Complex 40 Tuesday morning at 9:20AM (1320UTC) successfully putting the satellites into orbit and recovering the booster on ASOG, or more formally, A Shortfall Of Gravitas. Everything here is about as unsurprising as it gets. All the numbers we usually get were recited: this was the 57th launch of the Starlink satellites this year, the 80th landing on ASOG and the 341st booster landing to date. Then the surprise came: this was the first launch of Booster 1085.  

It took a while to hit me, but then "wait a minute... the first launch of B1085? Don't they only use brand new boosters for some customers who want only new, and always use "experienced" boosters for their own launches?" Just the other day I was joking with a friend about, 'do you remember when we didn't know it would be possible to get 10 launches out of a booster? And now we're saying 'that booster has 9 launches? - that's almost new." Why wasn't this a booster with at least five flights?

It turns out B1085 was intended for Crew 9, originally intended to launch before today, and now looking to be late September. They flew this booster because it had moisture intrusion as it was delivered by road from Texas to Florida back in late July.

“There was some moisture that went into the fuel in the [liquid oxygen] tank of that booster when it was transported from McGregor to the Cape. The desiccant system didn’t perform the way it was supposed to,” Stich said. “That desiccant system is supposed to keep that air dry and so, it didn’t perform the way it was supposed to. So we had to dry those tanks out and then replace a few components on the vehicle.”

In other words, they flew B1085 to test their repairs in the best way possible, and it was fine. Once back at land, B1085 will be readied for the Crew-9 launch, currently targeting launch no earlier than Sept. 24, from the same pad 40 it flew from Tuesday.

NASA Says Don't Stack Artemis II Until Orion Heat Shield Issue is Understood

That kinda says it all. The segments of the two solid rocket boosters for the Artemis II mission, and the core (center) stage are all in storage at Kennedy Space Center, and the natural progression here would be to stack the solids then attach the core stage to them on the mobile launch platform. Stacking the first segments of the solids could be as soon as next month. The hidden problem is that this starts a clock ticking on how long the pieces of the Artemis/SLS system can stand there. The joints connecting each piece of the SLS rocket's side boosters were originally certified for one year, but NASA nearly doubled the time limit for the Artemis I launch and could do so again for Artemis II. Much like they doubled the 45 days the batteries on Starliner were allowed to sit.

While the exact problems with Starliner and the Orion heat shield are very different, the situation ends up sounding very similar. Orion's heat shield is theoretically fine, but the only shield flown in the intended way, on the intended trajectory, didn't match the analysis. 

The spacecraft safely splashed down, and if any astronauts had been aboard, they would have been fine. However, the inspections of the recovered spacecraft showed divots of heat shield material were missing. The heat shield material, called Avcoat, is designed to erode away in a controlled manner during reentry. Instead, fragments fell off the heat shield that left cavities resembling potholes.

Nobody understands why. They could replace the heat shield but that would probably push the mission from '25 (which is dubious to start with) out to '27. The main alternatives to replacing the heat shield are to fly a different trajectory that would stress the heat shield less, or fly with it the way it is. Nobody is sure any one of the three approaches would work.  

Orion's heat shield showing some of the divots and missing heat shield. According to the OIG report, NASA found more than 100 locations on the heat shield where material “chipped away unexpectedly” during the Artemis 1 reentry.