Not Space as in Rockets, but as in Astronomy

It's a strange week, with SpaceX temporarily halting Falcon 9 launches. That means for the first time in memory, ULA is going to launch more than any other US launch provider. Typically, ULA launches as many in a year as SpaceX does in a week.  OK, some years ago, ULA launched in a year a SpaceX month's worth, and their goal is to launch Vulcan 25 times/year.   

The next launch in the US will be the Cert-2 flight for ULA's Vulcan on Friday morning, October 5, at 6:00 AM ET.  

Given that, there are currently three rather rare astronomical events either coming in the near future or currently happening. There's only one of the three that can't realistically be thought of as a once in a lifetime, and that's the last one.  It's a "once every few years" event.

That comet is Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, a comet first sighted at China's Purple Mountain Observatory on Jan. 9, 2023 and independently verified on Feb. 22 by the Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS).  Given that long name with a large part that most westerners wouldn't have a clue how to pronounce, it's widely being referred to simply as comet A3. The story early in September was that A3 was going to take its closest approach to the sun on the 27th of the month and since that often destroys the comet, I thought I'd wait to try and see it if it survives the pass by the sun. Well, it survived, and while it's in the predawn skies right now, it will be moving later into the evening skies as we go into October.  

Comet A3 is moving to a position in between the Earth and the sun. On Sept. 27, comet A3 reached its perihelion — the closest it gets to the sun — at about 36 million miles (59 million km). Comet A3 will get closest to Earth on Oct. 12, when it will pass about 44 million miles (71 million km) from Earth.

That link at the end of the previous paragraph to Forbes magazine is something I stumbled across that includes a long section toward the bottom that helps you figure out where to look.  If you'd like to play with a planetarium-style program to see where it will be from where you are, consider Stellarium's open web app.

Frankly, I haven't paid much attention to this story because I couldn't begin to list the number of times I got suckered in by talk about how bright a comet was going to be, only to have it not live up to the hype. As it is, this is barely a naked eye comet. It might get brighter and it might not. 

The second one is very likely a once in a lifetime event because it's a recurring event that comes around every 80 years.  Some child around 8 or 10 could conceivably see this one and the next one, given some luck and medical advances.  

That's the recurring nova - star explosion - of a dim star called T Coronae Borealis or T CrB.  When it goes off, it will be visible to the naked eye, a new star - the reason for the word "nova" after all.

Already, the stellar remnant, a white dwarf called T Coronae Borealis that's feasting on material from a nearby red giant star, has revealed a tell-tale dip in brightness that "is right on top" of the one that preceded its previous outburst in 1946. Astronomers don't yet know for sure what's causing the dip, but they say it's just a matter of time before the nova satiates its hunger and explodes into a spectacular nova. "We know it's going to go off — it's very obvious," Edward Sion, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, told Space.com.

An artist's concept of the binary star system known as T Coronae Borealis, in which a white dwarf star will burst with bright light after siphoning material from its larger red giant star companion. (Image credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center)

While this sort of nova has been known of for a long time, and this particular star's case as well, there were no X-ray or gamma-ray telescopes in space 80 years ago, the last time the nova erupted. All of this will be new information.  

T Cor Bor is being watched by NASA's Fermi gamma-ray space telescope every day — and, most of the time, every few hours. As soon as the nova erupts, gamma rays will skyrocket alongside a similar spike in the nova's brightness, allowing astronomers to decipher just how hot material is getting soon after the eruption, and how fast that material blows away from the white dwarf. Astronomers are also eager to learn more about how shock waves will whiz through space in the moments following the explosion, the specifics of which are not very well understood.

Finally, a once or twice in a lifetime story (I've been interested in astronomy since I was about 12, and it's the first I know of). I mention it because you might have seen the fun headlines that the Earth has captured a second moon.  It should have done that on Sunday. 

This temporary, and so far from Earth it won't complete a single orbit before it "escapes" from us again. 

"According to the latest data available from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory Horizons system, the temporary capture will start at 15:54 EDT (1954 UTC) and will end at 11:43 EDT (1543 UTC) on November 25," mini-moon event expert and Universidad Complutense de Madrid professor Carlos de la Fuente Marcos told Space.com on Wednesday (Sept. 25).

I read over the weekend that this is not only far too dim to be a naked eye object, but if you're a hobbyist with a 10 or 12" reflector - the largest common sizes - you still won't see it.  This is an event for 30" or larger observatory telescope, with very sensitive CCD imagers.  Face it. We ain't seeing it with our eyes and a telescope. Unless you work on Mt. Palomar or something.

SpaceX Grounds Their Falcon 9 Fleet After Crew-9

Word broke early this morning (Eastern Time) that the very last operation of the Falcon 9 that had launched Crew-9 yesterday didn't go as it should have, and that SpaceX was halting Falcon 9 operations until they fully understood what happened. In a post to X timed at 12:20 ET, SpaceX said:

After today’s successful launch of Crew-9, Falcon 9’s second stage was disposed in the ocean as planned, but experienced an off-nominal deorbit burn. As a result, the second stage safely landed in the ocean, but outside of the targeted area.

We will resume launching after we better understand root cause

Unfortunately, that's the extent of what's known at the moment.  

You might remember that SpaceX had an upper stage anomaly on a July 12 launch, that was from an upper stage relight to raise the orbit of the load Starlink satellites it was carrying and the resulting RUD ended up taking out the load of satellites because of their not achieving the desired orbit. After a gut-wrenching few minutes of troubleshooting, SpaceX identified the issue as "a crack in a sense line for a pressure sensor attached to the vehicle’s oxygen system. This line cracked due to fatigue caused by high loading from engine vibration and looseness in the clamp that normally constrains the line."  They were back to flight in two weeks.  (Now where did I leave that sarcasm font?)  

One can't help but wonder if this is related.  

The Important Aspect of Crew-9 Launch Not Being Talked About

Well, not being talked about much...  This was the first crewed mission from Space Launch Complex 40, (just called "slick 40" locally) using modifications to the pad that SpaceX has made over the last two years. 

Crew-9 was the 15th crewed launch by SpaceX, including the eight previous ISS crew rotation missions, Demo-2 test flight for NASA, three private astronaut missions to the ISS for Axiom Space and the Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn private missions. All those previous missions, though, launched from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center rather than SLC-40, a pad dating back to the 1960s that hosted Falcon 9 launches since the vehicle’s debut in 2010.

SpaceX started work on a crew tower at SLC-40 two years ago at NASA’s request. The agency wanted a backup option in case something happened at LC-39A, which is used extensively by SpaceX for other Falcon 9 missions as well as the Falcon Heavy. SpaceX also has plans to launch its Starship vehicle from that facility.

NASA elected to use SLC-40 for Crew-9 because LC-39A is being prepared for the Falcon Heavy launch of NASA’s Europa Clipper mission as soon as Oct. 10, a process that takes at least three weeks to complete. NASA had planned to use LC-39A for the mission before the agency delayed its launch from August as part of deliberations on Starliner.

SpaceNews also reports that there have been some lessons learned about differences between LC-39A and SLC-40. A major lesson was a static firing done four days ago (9/24). Soot from the static test blew back onto the vehicle, requiring some work to clean surfaces on the Dragon spacecraft and repaint a radiator on the spacecraft to ensure it would operate properly in orbit.  The reason is that the flame trench on 39A is longer and points in a different direction: north instead of east like SLC-40. Since prevailing winds here are from the eastern quadrant, due east plus or minus 45 degrees, they might have to do that sort of work regularly.  

Liftoff from SLC-40 of the Crew-9 mission to the ISS Sept. 28. Credit: NASA

Remember when Elon Musk said an indicator of success would be if SpaceX makes launches boring?  Do they make news where you are? It was very cloudy here, and with the trajectory going to the northeast (which is the worst direction for us) we sat indoors and watched it on NASASpaceflight on YouTube.

Small Space News Story Roundup 44

It has been a surprisingly slow news week in the space sector.  The sites I go to regularly didn't have much to talk about with most of the articles talking about small things, and lots of coverage of Hurricane Helene. Following are some stories extracted from that, starting with the most interesting story of the week, 

When NASA nearly gave Boeing ALL the funding for private crew missions

It's an article on the history of how in the process of awarding the two contracts to Boeing for Starliner and SpaceX for Crew Dragon, there was a point where NASA was going to give the contract entirely to Boeing and nothing to SpaceX. 

Let me just say that I haven't heard this story before. I know that SpaceX bid and was awarded a contract for $2.6 billion while Boeing's contract was for $4.2 billion, 60 percent more than SpaceX's. I hadn't heard that going into the last day of decision making at NASA, SpaceX had been shut out.  

The "establishment" at NASA were all there through the Space Shuttle program, and some had been there longer. The only real newcomer was Phil McAlister, director of commercial spaceflight at NASA at the time.

The decision was to be made on August 6, during a meeting at NASA headquarters. The agency's head of human spaceflight, Bill Gerstenmaier, convened his top human spaceflight advisors in the agency's "Space Operations Center" at headquarters. This secure room was built after the Columbia accident in 2003 for high-level strategic meetings. Gerstenmaier and about 20 senior officials at NASA sat around a large, rounded table, discussing the source evaluation board scores with the aim of picking a winner.

The room was presented with a literal report card for the two companies. Like a report card, frequently, the grades gave the impression of one being clearly better than the other, but in reality, the differences were modest. To stretch the report card analogy, asked whether the company could meet NASA's requirements and actually safely fly crew to and from the station lets' say Boeing received an "excellent" rating, above SpaceX's "very good;" or essentially an A versus a B. In reality, that might mean Boeing's A was the very bottom score for an A and SpaceX's B might have been the highest possible score for a B. One or two points difference at most. 

Because of the significant difference in price, McAlister said, the source evaluation board assumed SpaceX would win the competition. He was thrilled, because he figured this meant that NASA would have to pick two companies, SpaceX based on price, and Boeing due to its slightly higher technical score. He wanted competition to spur both of the companies on.

Well, you know "the rest of the story" (as Paul Harvey would say) so you know they eventually did award two contracts and the rest of the article is a closer look at how that happened.  During the long meeting, McAlister pointed out things in the two "report cards" that backed the eventual decision to award the two companies their contracts. It's still an interesting story.  Now imagine if they had awarded the contract only for Starliner and it turned out like it has. There would be no way to the ISS except by the Russian Roscosmos.  No Polaris Dawn or Inspiration4; no Axiom flights 1 through 3.  What else?

Crew-9 is go for Saturday's Launch

That is, it's go with a 45% chance of violating weather rules. The launch is still set for the same time as shown in Tuesday's post:  Saturday, 9/28, 1:17PM EDT.  SpaceX reports: 

The instantaneous launch is at 1:17 p.m. ET, with a backup opportunity available on Sunday, September 29 at 12:54 p.m. ET if needed.

A live webcast of this mission will begin about one hour prior to liftoff, which you can watch here and on X @SpaceX. You can also watch the webcast on the new X TV app.

The Dragon spacecraft supporting this mission previously flew the Crew-4, Ax-2, and Ax-3 missions to and from the International Space Station. Following stage separation, Falcon 9’s first stage will land on Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

They don't mention the booster's number or if it has a history. SpaceX tends to fly newer boosters on crewed flights, first through maybe fifth flight.

Blue Origin static fires New Glenn upper stage

On Monday (Sept. 23) Blue Origin successfully static fire tested the upper stage of their planned first test flight vehicle.  

Blue Origin said it test-fired the second stage of the New Glenn on the pad at Cape Canaveral’s Launch Complex 36 Sept. 23. The two BE-3U engines in the upper stage fired for 15 seconds in the test.

The test firing “marked the first time we operated the vehicle as an integrated system,” the company stated, testing interactions among various vehicle systems and ground equipment. It also provided practice for the launch control team.

Since the second stage of these launch vehicles tend to burn longer than the first stages, and those tend to burn on the order of two to three minutes, it's hard for me think that a 15 second static firing is anything but a test to verify everything is hooked up right and responding to commands properly.  It seems to be among the shortest tests that might mean anything.  I assume that stage was fired for the full duration of a typical mission at some other time and place. 

You'll remember that this vehicle was intended for the ESCAPADE mission to Mars, which required launching during a narrow window between this October 13 and 21. NASA scrubbed that mission on September 6th, expecting that Blue couldn't get the vehicle ready to launch that soon. Getting this stage into test on Sept 23, over two full weeks after the scrub, seems to reinforce NASA's decision. Blue Origin will instead use the the first New Glenn mission to test technology for its Blue Ring orbital transfer vehicle. That launch is scheduled for as soon as November.  Considering everything they talk of getting done before it's ready to fly, I read that as "late November." 

Blue Origin test-firing the upper stage of its New Glenn rocket Sept. 23. Credit: Blue Origin

As the Pooh Said

 It has been a rather blustery day.

Needless to say this isn't my creation. This is classic Disney BW - Before Woke - but you knew that.

Last night, it occurred to me that we were low on cat food and needed to make a run to a store, some research revealed that our usual grocery store was open and most everything in the county was also "business as usual." "C'mon - it's a tropical storm not a Cat 5 hurricane. No big deal." We decided to go early, around 7:30 this morning, because of not having a clue how busy it might be and just bought the cat food and a few necessities. The store was close to empty.  No rush for French Toast as I hear about in snow storms. 

Since then, it has been a rather boring day, just sitting here reading weather updates and poking around to find anything interesting. The winds were variable tending toward a peak in later afternoon, but they could have been under 20 or over 30 on any sample.  Minutes ago, the official report was winds are SE at 24mph gusting 40, while a few hours ago, I think I recall seeing 32 gusting 55, pretty much as our local NWS forecast said. The screen capture that McThag shows is higher than the winds we were seeing, though not by much. 

I kept an eye on the tower and antennas all day, walked around the house a few times, and found no issues anywhere.  One corner of our property is overgrown by two neighbors' trees, and while I won't relax until the storm is truly over with, nothing appears damaged. We haven't had a single power glitch.

The center of the storm is north of us as of the 8PM update, so it should all be getting better from here on as the storm moves toward landfall. Weather Underground says the steady winds will drop back under 20mph by 4AM tomorrow.

Time to Hunker Down and Ride Out Whatever

While it has been a rather busy couple of days, an inordinate amount of time has been spent trying to determine exactly how much and what kind of prepping we should do for Hurricane Helene.  We aren't going to experience hurricane conditions here, so the exact question is what should we be preparing for. Let's start here, with the 8PM update from National Hurricane Center. You'll notice that they have gone to Central time for some reason.  While parts of the panhandle are in the central time zone, the place where the center line of the predicted cone crosses out of the Gulf is still on EDT.  Yesterday, all those places marked 1 AM or PM would have been called 2 AM or PM.

When I say we're under tropical storm warning, you can see by the colored line that the TS warnings  extend from around Tampa bay down through the Florida Keys (and Dry Tortugas islands) all the way back north to the SC/NC border. 

The NHC also issues a pair of charts that show the percent chance of actually getting tropical storm winds (sustained at over 40mph) and a prediction of when they should arrive.  This is the latest of those - and provides no more clarity to me.

Cape Canaveral is visible just south of the dotted line saying Thursday at 2 PM, so since that's north of us, I'd assume they would get here earlier in the day. Maybe 11AM?  There's discontinuity around the Cape that shows chances of experiencing those winds goes up as the location approaches the predicted track. We're in the 20-30% chance color band, and that's about all I can get out of it. 

Looking at both Weather Underground and the local National Weather Service office show neither of them predicts steady winds at minimal TS strength: NWS says 32 mph and WUnderground says 30mph. Both of those predictions are in the afternoon tomorrow. This has been the case through yesterday and today.  Unlike WU, the NWS shows predicted wind gusts, and those show over 50 mph tomorrow afternoon, with one peak at 55 mph at 3PM.  So since the various storm levels from tropical depression through all the hurricane categories are based on straight line winds - "gusts don't count" - and neither says we get a tropical storm, why are we under warnings?  What percent chance do they decide needs the warnings?

Given the uncertainties, and the unpleasant memories from Hurricane Ian two years ago, which had far more in common with this storm than at first blush, I decided to crank my tower over. As I mentioned back in January when I did a quick fix to one of my antennas, this system is really easy to work with. (More details here) I take two nuts off both U-bolts and one at a tower leg and then just push a little to unwind the cable off the winch.  Really easy to live with. I didn't pull the antennas off and crank the tower back up. My bet is that while the wind gusts with Ian snapped off both halves of an antenna element, these gusts will be weaker and with the antenna being semi-sheltered by the house and everything, the antennas will be fine. The tower and antennas were fully up during Ian, with less protection from the winds.

Tuesday Update - Crew-9 Rescheduled

Just a short post to relay that SpaceX has bumped the Crew-9 flight out to Saturday, 9/28, 1:17PM EDT.  

We are on Tropical Storm Watch and (IIRC) they don't put up Warnings until we're under 24 hours before they're expected which looks to be midday Thursday.  As I said Monday, Wednesday is looking like the day to "get 'er done." Which basically means Wednesday morning. 

Screen capture from NextSpaceflight 

Crew-9 Launch Thursday Might Slide out in Time

The launch of the Crew-9 mission, which will be the two man flight (instead of the usual four) that brings the Starliner duo of Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams home next year, has been listed as No Earlier Than this coming Thursday the 26th (2:05PM EDT) for a couple of weeks now.  It turns out that a complication is developing that might affect that launch. That complication is currently named "Potential Tropical Cyclone Nine" and by the following map is looking to be Tropical Storm Helene by the next update at 2AM or perhaps 8AM (ET) tomorrow morning. 

Image from the National Hurricane Center, screen grab from FLHurricane.com.

Tomorrow at 8AM doesn't matter, what matters is Thursday around launch time, and that's the location up the track where the storm is designated "M" for a major hurricane, Category III or higher, at 2PM Thursday. Right now, that's not going to bring bad conditions to the Space Coast. The forecast predictions call for a 20 - 30% chance of tropical storm winds, or 40mph and up, Thursday afternoon. Whether or not that's acceptable launch weather I don't have a source for but I don't think so. I've looked at the models the NHC uses to derive these predictions and only one model out of more than a dozen forecasts it getting as strong as Category III.  Only five models show it even getting as strong as category II.

All those predictions are guaranteed to change over the next couple of days. 

For us here south of the Cape, preps will have to be completed NLT Wednesday afternoon. As you can tell by how close the black spots "S" and "H" are at the bottom of the track and the "H" to "M" at the top, the storm's forward motion speeds up as it goes north.

The Crew-9 mission will have no pilot, relying entirely on the autonomous systems of the Dragon capsule carrying Mission Specialist Aleksandr Gorbunov from Roscosmos and Commander Nick Hague from NASA. Their return trip, tentatively set for the end of February, will bring Butch and Suni in the two unoccupied seats. 

Left to right, Aleksandr Gorbunov and Nick Hague. Image credit: NASA/Josh Valcarel

Imagine a Starlink Network with a High Data Rate - From the Moon

One of the things that I remember most about the Apollo missions was the video downlinks - actually watching Neil Armstrong's "one small step for a man..." and scenes from all the missions on the moon's surface. Considering the technology of the times, a grainy, black and white video stream from the moon was probably the limit of what they could do. 

As you might expect, NASA wants to do better next time.

To that end, NASA announced this week that it had awarded a contract to Houston-based Intuitive Machines for "lunar relay services." Essentially this means Intuitive Machines will be responsible for building a small constellation of satellites around the Moon that will beam data back to Earth from the lunar surface.

"One of the requirements is a 4K data link," said Steve Altemus, co-founder and chief executive of Intuitive Machines, in an interview. "That kind of high fidelity data only comes from a data relay with a larger antenna than can be delivered to the surface of the Moon."

NASA is working toward developing a "Near Space Network" for communications out to 1 million miles from Earth; the moon is about 1/4 of that distance while the Lagrange Point L2 where the James Webb Space Telescope and the ESA's Euclid telescope are located is just inside the 1 million mile limit - about 932,000 miles. 

...Intuitive Machines' contract is worth as much as $4.82 billion over the next decade, depending on the level of communication services that NASA chooses to purchase.

The space agency is also expected to award a ground-based component of this network for large dishes to receive signals from near space, taking some of this burden off the Deep Space Network. Altemus said Intuitive Machines has also bid on this ground component contract.

I'm assuming you either immediately remember the name of Intuitive Machines or you're thinking "I think I've heard that name before... what did they do again?" They launched the largely successful first commercial landing on the moon. Maybe I should say "first commercial crash landing" because the lander (officially Odysseus and quickly renamed Odie) broke a leg on the approach to their landing spot and tipped over upon landing. The word "landing" only applied in the loosest sense of the word and the mission was a continuous string of "making do with what we got," but Intuitive Machines reported every paying customer was happy with their results. 

That mission was called IM-1. They've addressed a long checklist of things to go after and IM-2 is currently expected to fly before the end of this year, also to the south pole area. It carries a NASA payload called PRIME-1 (Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1) that will hunt for water ice, which is thought to be abundant in the area.  

Then, approximately 15 months from now, the company is planning to launch another lander, IM-3. This mission is likely to carry the first data-relay satellite—each is intended to be about 500 kg, Altemus said, but the final design of the vehicles is still being finalized—to lunar orbit. Assuming this first satellite works well, the two following IM missions will each carry two relay satellites, making for a constellation of five spacecraft orbiting the Moon.

Two of the satellites will go into polar orbits and serve NASA's Artemis needs at the South Pole, Altemus said. Two more are likely to go into halo orbits, and a fifth satellite will be placed into an equatorial orbit. This will provide full coverage of the Moon not just for communications, but also for position, navigation, and timing.

The source article doesn't give much details on the size antennas that will be required, given the quote about "a larger antenna than can be delivered to the surface of the Moon." With no idea of any of the key radio parameters, I can't fill in the equations that would tell me how big those satellite antennas have to be. Everything I could come up with would ultimately be a WAG.

The IM-2 lander being prepared for hot-fire testing this week. Image credit: Intuitive Machines.

"They" Say it's the First Day of Fall - Do You Believe Them?

The fall equinox, the start of fall, is officially 8:44AM EDT on Sunday, September 22nd this year. Although I've noticed sunrise getting later and sunset getting earlier for well over a month now, I'm not convinced that it's not still August, which would make it August 53rd. There have been one or two days that were cloudy and rained all day long, and the temperatures felt more like it was easing into fall, but our current forecast through the last of month shows consistent temperatures that are higher than I'd like to see. 

Screen capture from the Weather Underground. 

You'll notice that the daily high temperatures never get as low as 85, but on the positive side, they never touch 90. On the way to the grocery store Thursday, the car's under the hood temperature sensor read 97. Yeah, that's because it's stagnant air under the hood with car sitting in direct sunlight. Once we drove a few miles that dropped to 91. 

The night time temperatures shown never get below 75 and both of those are the two last days of the month.  All in all, it's not unusual for this time of year, and even the kids and homeless guys you hear talking in the park are talking about "when it cools off in November."

The thing most of you have never thought of

The word equinox translates (roughly) as "equal nights" and the equinox essentially has an equal length night all around the world.  The "fun fact" here is that the sunrise and sunset times are changing the fastest around the equinox. At any given location, the day-to-day difference in day length (as measured by the difference between sunrise and sunset day to day) is greatest around the days of the equinoxes.  An easily seen aspect of that is the number of hours of daylight is close to the same now around lots of the US, while in three more months at the next solstice (winter solstice here in the northern hemisphere), the northernmost latitudes will be in 24 hour long nights and zero hour long days while the lowest latitudes will have changed much less.  

What that means is that terminator line dividing day and night are the closest to vertical that they'll get on a map. This line is usually called the grayline in ham radio circles and it is dramatically important for determining where signals can come from and go to at any given moment. The effect is greatest at the lowest amateur bands and is justifiably famous on 160 meters (1.8 to 2.0 MHz). The effect is also important on 80 meters (3.5 to 4.0 MHz) becoming less important as frequency increases.  

Here's an example of today's grayline mapped out a little while ago Friday evening as I write:

This particular map is showing reported contacts on the 6m ham band (50.0 to 54.0 MHz) and grayline propagation doesn't show up here. What does show up is the more common ionospheric propagation - and pretty much everything except grayline. The two different darker colors designate the twilight area (the lighter area with almost straight North/South lines) and the fully night area (the darker oval on the right).  The shape of those areas changes radically as we get closer to the solstice and over the course of a year there are dramatic differences in the areas you can contact due to the moving grayline.

If you're on 160 to 40 and even 30 meters, remember these are the bands that tend to be open to remote locations at night so your chances of working places in daylight are pretty close to zero.  The bands from 20 meters up through the rest of HF tend to be open more in the daylight and the opposite of the lowest four bands. Since sunrise and sunset are pretty much the defining aspects of night and day, knowing where the day/night terminator is can be the first step in trying to figure out where to try to contact.

Oh. As is often the case, if you go searching for grayline with a search engine, you'll find gray and grey as well as one word or two words. 

Small Space News Story Roundup 43

A couple of small stories mostly gathered from this week's Rocket Report with a common theme:

Ariane 6's First Flight Issue was in Software 

As was (slightly) covered in the First Ariane 6 flight wrap-up back in early July, while the mission was described as nominal there was a problem with the upper stage that affected the payloads the mission was testing with. The European Space Agency official stream later reported an issue with the Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) which allows the upper stage Vinci engine to reignite.

In a Joint Mission Report, the ESA stated:

"The investigations included analyzing why re-ignition of the upper stage Auxiliary Propulsion Unit (APU) did not occur as planned at the beginning of the long coasting phase of Ariane 6’s inaugural mission. Analysis shows that one temperature measurement exceeded a pre-defined limit and that the flight software correctly triggered a shutdown, entering the long coasting phase without the APU thrust and so degrading the proceeding of the demo phase. As a consequence, the third ignition sequence of the Vinci engine was not ordered by the flight software."

The fix? They're going re-define that pre-defined limit to a value that will allow the final APU burn to be started. They go on to say, "there are no "showstoppers" that will delay a second flight of the vehicle." 

Eutelsat turns to Japan for launch needs

In a somewhat surprising announcement this week, Eutelsat said Wednesday it had signed a contract with Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries for multiple H3 rocket launches starting in 2027.  The French company is probably best known as a latecomer to the "Internet via satellites" sector that merged with OneWeb in 2023, but this doesn't appear to be aimed at this market segment. 

The previously announced launch contracts for OneWeb include 3D-printing company Relativity Space’s Terran R vehicle and the ESA’s Ariane 6, which have both experienced development delays. There is also some question as to whether the Ariane 6 rocket will have capacity given its existing manifest, including Project Kuiper launches for Amazon. Regardless, it's a big win for Mitsubishi, which has struggled to find commercial success with the new H3 booster.

Eutelsat spokesperson Katie Dowd said the agreement is focused on launches for the company’s upcoming satellites in geostationary orbit, but declined to provide more information.

It could simply be that Eutelsat is trying to keep all options open, perhaps having more than one launch vehicle available for a given payload. “Given that Amazon has acquired Ariane 6 rockets, if we wanted to use it in, say, 2027, are we going to fit into their launch manifest or not?” OneWeb CEO Eva Berneke said in an interview earlier this summer. 

While Eutelsat has worked with the European Space Agency in the past, they apparently are not part of the ESA.

Meanwhile, ESA officials complain about SpaceX some more 

Arianespace CEO Stéphane Israël recently gave an interview to the French publication Les Echos that has been shared by European Spaceflight. It sounds like the once-dominant commercial satellite launch firm, which has been run over by the SpaceX steamroller, is tired of being asked about the SpaceX steamroller. Israël said Europeans should "stop just comparing SpaceX and Elon Musk with Arianespace."

Why? ... His reasoning for this was that SpaceX is not just a launch company but one that controls a broader value chain that includes satellite manufacturing and operation through Starlink. “He competes against the entire space industry on his own,” said Israël. In order to compete with SpaceX, he explained, “the entire European space sector must be united and ambitious.” Israël identified Europe’s planned Iris² satellite constellation as a key project to ensure future competitiveness. “Our hopes rest on the Iris² constellation promoted by the European Commission,” he said. The future of this project, however, appears to be uncertain, especially after the sudden departure of Thierry Breton from the European Commission this week.

Sorry, Mr. Arianespace CEO, but that sounds like the problem is on the EU side, not the SpaceX side. Start with the part that goes, “the entire European space sector must be united and ambitious” and work on that.

So... why these three stories? Doesn't the total of the three imply Europe has lost their ability to conduct a space program?  The new rocket needs a fix - it doesn't sound big, but everyone thought it was fine before the last launch.  Going to Japan for H3 launches?  Implies the bigger Ariane rockets aren't ready or available.  Complaining about SpaceX? Is that just to get publicity in the EU? Or do they intend to start lawfare to cripple their competitor?  The one that just launched the Galileo satellites for the EU. As close to "national security missions" as the EU gets.

Vulcan Centaur's Cert-2 Flight Nearing “Final Countdown”

We haven't had much news from United Launch Alliance (ULA) about the upcoming Certification-2 flight for their Vulcan rocket since late June when we learned that they were planning to do the flight without a functional payload. 

Today, SpaceNews posted an update with some input from the US Space Force saying (my words) they'd like it better if ULA were flying a functional payload, (that presumably could relay some data used to evaluate the booster performance) so that a successful launch will not immediately guarantee certification. 

“I’m definitely looking forward to that second certification flight. But it’s not instantaneous that if they have a clean flight, they’re automatically certified,” Brig. Gen. Kristin Panzenhagen, the U.S. Space Force’s program executive officer for assured access to space, said Sept. 18 at the Air Space & Cyber Conference.

The Cert-2 flight is currently showing on NextSpaceflight.com as October 4 at 0600AM EDT or 1000 UTC. As has been discussed before, this was to have been the second of the typical two certification flights required, and had long been set to be Sierra Space's Dream Chaser smaller version of something like the space shuttles (in that it will land on a runway) but not man rated, just intended to carry cargo. After what appeared to be a successful test campaign lasting months at NASA's Neil Armstrong Test Facility in Sandusky, Ohio, I had been expecting Dream Chaser to be ready for an early fall launch. That June post (first link at the top) was when Sierra said "uncle" - there was too much to get done to make a launch now. In its place, Vulcan will launch an inert payload - dead weight.

A complication is that Vulcan itself is late. Late enough for fires to be getting started under the ULA executives.

In 2020, the Space Force selected ULA and SpaceX as its two primary launch providers under the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 2 program, a five-year contract. However, Vulcan has yet to perform any national security missions due to certification delays, partly driven by engine development issues and a March 2023 explosion during testing of the Centaur upper stage.

The Pentagon, meanwhile, has grown increasingly concerned about ULA’s ability to meet its commitments under the NSSL contract. Panzenhagen noted that the Cert-1 mission was a success: “What we saw on the first certification flight for Vulcan was a very clean flight. The rocket performed really well.”
...
Even if the second flight proceeds smoothly, Panzenhagen emphasized that ULA’s certification will not be immediate. “We will have a lot of data to go through after that just to make sure that everything performed up to expectations,” she said. “We will need some time after that to make sure that everything was clean.”

Despite these hurdles, she expressed optimism: “We’re definitely looking forward to having them be completely certified, so we can start those national security space launches.” ULA has set its sights on launching two national security missions, USSF-106 and USSF-87, before the end of 2024, pending certification.

NextSpaceflight shows USSF-106 as No Earlier Than (NET) "October 2024" and USSF-87  NET December.  I must be dramatically uninformed. That means they essentially have everything to build the next Vulcan for the first and I have to think most of what they need for the December launch. Considering their pace so far.  Standard Disclaimer: launching in June of 2027 (a Pulled From Air date far out in the future) technically complies with No Earlier Than October 2024.

Vulcan Cert-2 flight preparations under way at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Undated Image. Credit: ULA

About Those FAA Fines on SpaceX

There have been headlines in the news aggregators for the last couple of days that FAA has announced big fines against SpaceX for alleged safety violations. The number being quoted is $633,000. Today, the story was changed to SpaceX saying they'll sue the FAA for regulatory overreach. 

A bit of research reveals the stories behind the fines and I can't help but see this as increasing the lawfare against SpaceX. SpaceNews sums up the situation well. These fines are related to two launches in 2023.

The FAA announced Sept. 17 that it notified SpaceX of $633,009 in proposed fines for violating terms of its launch licenses during the June 2023 Falcon 9 launch of the Satria-1, or PSN Satria, broadband satellite and the July 2023 Falcon Heavy launch of Jupiter-3, or EchoStar-24, broadband satellite. Both launches were successful. 

The exact details of both incidents are rather different. What they share in common is that SpaceX wanted to make a change to maintain or improve their operations and the FAA couldn't keep up with SpaceX.

In the Satria-1 case, SpaceX had requested changes to the FAA in May of 2023 to (1) allow the use of a new launch control center in the company’s “Hangar X” facility at the Kennedy Space Center and (2) they wanted to skip a poll of launch controllers at two hours before liftoff, apparently believing it wasn't really adding any value to their operations. 

The FAA notified SpaceX "shortly before the scheduled launch" that it would not be able to approve those changes and modify the license in time, although the notice didn't state why. The article from SpaceNews never says exactly how close to the launch SpaceX was notified that the FAA would not modify their launch license to allow these two things.  With no approval, someone decided to just go ahead and do what they needed to do. The FAA is fining them $350,000 for that launch. 

The July Falcon Heavy launch isn't exactly the same, but "it rhymes."  Nine days before the launch, SpaceX asked the FAA for a modification to its launch license to allow it to use a new tank farm for RP-1 fuel at KSC’s Launch Complex 39A. The FAA notified SpaceX two days before the scheduled launch that they would not be able to modify the license in time, but SpaceX went ahead and used the new tank farm for the launch.  The FAA is fining them $283,009 for that launch violation.

The FAA insists that their actions are always motivated by safety but it's hard for me to see any safety connection. 

In the first case, nobody in their right mind would put a new launch control center in operation without testing it through every imaginable situation, nor would taking a poll of controllers at T-2 hours when there's a completely redundant such poll later in the countdown add anything. These polls are summaries of real time checks and tests, they really aren't what determines Go or No Go. Problems are found throughout the countdown. 

In the second case, they used a new fuel tank. So what?  Again, nobody that's going to work around one of those tanks, or depend on them for mission success, would put a tank in operation without testing it every way imaginable. 

For both incidents, SpaceX has 30 days to respond, with the option of participating in an “informal conference” with agency attorneys and submitting information to explain what happened.

Musk, though, suggested SpaceX would take the FAA to court rather than use those administrative procedures. “SpaceX will be filing suit against the FAA for regulatory overreach,” he posted on X, the social media platform he also owns.

Musk claimed in other posts the fines were “lawfare” by the FAA against SpaceX. “I am highly confident that discovery will show improper, politically-motivated behavior by the FAA,” he argued, but provided no evidence to support his claim.

The Falcon Heavy launch of the Jupiter-3 Satellite, July 28, 2023. Image credit: SpaceX

It may be lawfare or it may simply be the exceptional egotism all federal regulators seem to have. They're not good enough to grade SpaceX, they're not good enough to understand what a leading edge company like SpaceX is doing, but their egos say they are.

Uh Oh... Looks Like Axiom Space is in Trouble

The subtitle is What happens when a Space 1.0 Guy Runs a Space 2.0 Startup  

According to a report in Forbes online (they won't let anyone read that without being a subscriber), Axiom Space is in trouble. Outlined by Ars Technica, this afternoon, it sounds like my subtitle. 

... Axiom Space, which was founded by billionaire Kam Ghaffarian and NASA executive Mike Suffredini in 2016, has been struggling to raise money to keep its doors open and has had difficulties meeting its payroll dating back to at least early 2023. In addition, the Houston-based company has fallen behind on payments to key suppliers, including Thales Alenia Space for its space station and SpaceX for crewed launches.

"The lack of fresh capital has exacerbated long-standing financial challenges that have grown alongside Axiom’s payroll, which earlier this year was nearly 1,000 employees," the publication reports. "Sources familiar with the company’s operations told Forbes that co-founder and CEO Michael Suffredini, who spent 30 years at NASA, ran Axiom like a big government program instead of the resource-constrained startup it really was. His mandate to staff up to 800 workers by the end of 2022 led to mass hiring so detached from product development needs that new engineers often found themselves with nothing to do." Bold added: SiG 9/17/24

The big problem here isn't Axiom; the problem is that NASA is depending on them to build a successor to the International Space Station. When the company was founded in 2016, the plan was to launch an initial space station module in 2020. 

They're taking advantage of the precedent that SLS/Artemis set for being late and over budget.

Presently, Axiom plans to launch its first module to the International Space Station no earlier than late 2026. And the company's ambitions have been downsized, according to the report. Instead of a four-module station that would be separated from the government-operated space station by 2030, Axiom is likely to go forward with a smaller station consisting of just two elements.

It seems unnecessary to say a two module station won't be able to do as much as one with four modules, if the modules are the same size.  

"The business model had always counted on having significant power for microgravity research, semiconductor production, and pharmaceutical production, plus supporting life in space," a source told the publication. "The business model had to change… and that has continued to make it challenging for the company to get around its cash flow issues."

Axiom is one of several companies—alongside Blue Origin, Voyager Space, Vast Space, and potentially SpaceX—working with NASA to devise commercial replacements for the International Space Station after that facility retires in 2030.

So with the contractor on the verge of going down in flames, what's NASA to do?  Why, issue a Request For Proposal (RFP), of course! This new RFP will be issued for a second round of commercial space station contracts in 2025 and the contract awarded the following year.  Whomever NASA awards the contract to, they'll be starting to work at around the time Axiom might have been able to deliver their first module.

Possibly worse than that is that many insiders say NASA may be trying to get two contractors. While the ISS was built over many years with Space Shuttle cargo flights, those aren't flying anymore. Could another one be done?  Who lifts the cargo? New Glenn? Starship? Axiom founder Kam Ghaffarian said there isn't enough work for two contractors. NASA should decide on one contractor and award the contract in '25. "Today there's not enough market for more than one," he said.

The one bright spot - or a less dim spot, if you prefer - is about Axiom's other major contract with NASA, the $228 million contract to develop spacesuits for the Artemis Program. 

Multiple sources have told Ars that, from a financial and technical standpoint, this spacesuit program is on better footing than the station program. And at this point, the spacesuit program is probably the one element of Axiom's business that NASA views as essential going forward.

Axiom's vision of their own space station. A screen grab off their website from 2020. This is not the "initial module" mentioned above. That was illustrated here.

A Finale on the Polaris Dawn Mission

Sunday morning, as planned, the Polaris Dawn Crew Dragon capsule splashed into the waters west of the Dry Tortugas. Splashdown was at 3:37 AM instead of the 3:36 listed in the schedule earlier Saturday, but I'm going to assume there's really not much that can be done to a capsule landing under parachutes to make it take meaningfully more or less time to get down. I think the answer is "close enough." 

In the world of privately funded manned spaceflight, this had to be the most ambitious flight ever. In Jared Isaacman's first privately funded spaceflight, Inspiration4, just putting four civilians in orbit was remarkable. Since then, aside from acting as the dedicated "ISS Taxi" for NASA, SpaceX has brought astronauts from another private company, Axiom Space, to the ISS three separate times. (Axiom's 4th flight is currently penciled in for next spring).  In overview, Polaris Dawn was unlike all the other private space flights. It wasn't just a suborbital ride above the Karman line so riders could say they've been in space, nor was it a ride to what's effectively the orbiting Grand Hotel and University Labs of the Space Station. 

It was record setting. 

On the first day of the flight, the mission flew to an altitude of 1,408.1 km. The headline has been that it's the first time a human has been that far up since the last Apollo flight passed through it on the way to reentry. I tend to think of the record as going back a little past that to Gemini 11 in 1966, which rather deliberately, like Polaris Dawn, went to that altitude to orbit rather than "just passing through." 

Then, on the third day of the flight, the space walk took place. More a test of the EVA suits overall function than the sort of tethered spacewalk of Gemini 4, or the ISS astronauts much more recently, it still set records for things never done by private space missions.  As Eric Berger points out at Ars Technica:

Although this foray into space largely repeated what the Soviet Union, and then the United States, performed in the mid-1960s, with tethered spacewalks, it nonetheless was significant. These commercial spacesuits cost a fraction of government suits and can be considered version 1.0 of suits that could one day enable many people to walk in space, on the Moon, and eventually Mars.

Remember: SpaceX openly talks about needing millions of spacesuits like these. More than any other company in the space industry that I'm aware of, SpaceX is the master of rapid iteration. If that was version 1.0, the designers probably have done another version every day since Thursday.  At least one.  

This wasn't just a billionaire "joy ride" in which Jared Isaacman got to enjoy a week of thrill-seeking that mere mortals can't remotely afford. This was a high risk, important adventure from start to finish. 

The reality is that Isaacman and his hand-picked crew, which included two SpaceX employees who will take their learnings back to design spacecraft and other vehicles at the company, trained hard for this mission over the better part of two years. In flying such a daring profile to a high altitude through potential conjunctions with thousands of satellites, and then venting their cabin to perform a spacewalk, each of the crew members assumed high risks.

For its Crew Dragon missions that fly to and from the International Space Station, NASA has an acceptable "loss-of-crew" probability of 1-in-270. But in those spaceflights the crew spends significantly less time inside Dragon and flies to a much lower and safer altitude. They do not conduct spacewalks out of Dragon. The crew of Polaris Dawn, therefore, assumed non-trivial dangers in undertaking this spaceflight. These risks assumed were measured rather than reckless.

So why? Why take such risks? Because the final frontier, after nearly seven decades of spaceflight, remains largely unexplored. If it is human destiny to one day expand to other worlds, and eventually other stars, we're going to need to do so with more than a few government astronauts making short sorties. To open space there must be lower cost access and commercial potential.

The streak at the upper left, about the apparent height of the moon, is Polaris Dawn during reentry. The vessels in the foreground are the deployed recovery ships ready to go and secure the capsule. Image credit: Polaris Program/John Kraus

To edit the line I ended with on Thursday, this was more than one small walk for a man and woman; this was one giant leap for mankind.

It's About Time

This post is going to be about time and some concepts that we come across in life and space travel. Today over lunch, we watched a show on Amazon prime called "Faster Than Light: the Dream of Interstellar Flight." It was 45 minutes long and while dated a few years (it was made in 2017) reasonably well done. As a bonus, it appears to be available on YouTube and watchable there. While it didn't really cover any things that were new to me, it was a pretty decent look at the problems and the concepts.  That's what led to this. 

The nearest star is Proxima centauri - Centaurus is a constellation in the southern hemisphere and the name Proxima literally means "close". It's a way to name it, "the closest start in Centaurus".  An easy web search says that star is 4.2465 light years from us. How far is that? In statute miles, which (I think) most readers will reflexively think of, that's 24,963,000,000,000 or 24.963 trillion miles. 40.175 trillion km.

Voyagers 1 and 2 are the farthest man made objects from us, and have been traveling for 47 years. As I've said before:

Voyager 1 is currently 22 hours, 37 minutes and change away at light speed. I'll call it 22-1/2 light hours away. The nearest stars are just over four light years away. Assuming it's even going in the right direction, it'll take Voyager 1 almost 77,000 years to get to the Alpha/Proxima Centauri star system. 

It's safe to say that there's no way we could mount a mission to the nearest star with any technology we know of. What moving machines do you know of that could work for 77,000 years? If we could go 10x faster than Voyager, it's still 7700 years. We'd have to go a significant portion of the speed of light to even get there in an adult's lifetime. The problems are mind boggling - and this is for the nearest star. Our galaxy is thousands of times bigger than the distance to Proxima centauri; around 88,000 light years in diameter. It's practically impossible to go those distances. Even going 100 times the speed of light it takes far too long to get there. 

Polaris Dawn to Splashdown EARLY Sunday Morning

As I start to write, it's around 8:30 PM ET. Polaris Dawn is scheduled to splashdown just west of the Dry Tortugas - the westernmost extent of the Florida Keys - at 3:36 AM ET. I'm guessing that with the splashdown almost exactly seven hours from now, they'll either soon be waking up to their last few hours in orbit or they just have.

The team put up another video today, a few minutes describing some of the medical tests they've been doing as part of the "36 experiments from 31 partner institutions" they've been completing. The Space.com video ends with a few seconds video of Jared Isaacman's spacewalk.

As this is a mission intended to increase donations to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital for pediatric cancers and other problems, the Hospital is an overarching supporter of the mission and something that drives the force behind the space mission, Jared Isaacman. Because of that, the crew has had video communications with the hospital and patients. I haven't seen links to any of those. 

As they quipped at Space.com, "Like every other major milestone of the Polaris Dawn mission, you're going to have to be awake in the middle of the night to catch the action." For those getting or staying up to watch, SpaceX provides this handy schedule to follow:

While it's difficult to truly know, the mission has seemed completely successful so far and achieved all of their major goals. Meanwhile, SpaceX has kept doing what they do best, launching payloads to orbit. There was a Starlink launch from Vandenberg yesterday, the 13th, and a customer's satellites from Cape Canaveral on the 12th (AST SpaceMobile’s cellphone-compatible Bluebird Block 1).  On Monday, they'll launch two more Galileo navigation satellites for the European Union (the EU's "GPS"). 

A Peripatetic Friday of Musings

While most of the stories I see in the usual sources is about missions with dates months out in the future, there's a few that go together - and one that doesn't really.  

Is Boeing Going Into Collapse?

This is combining a few stories. I'll try to be brief and coherent. 

First story. The return of the Starliner CFT-1 capsule (Crewed Flight Test) isn't news - that was last Saturday.  But it wasn't widely reported that there were new problems on the return flight.

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.

The fact that these are different thrusters from the ones that caused them to come back without Butch and Suni doesn't sound good. Did the redesign/recertification task just get bigger? 

Second story. Then there's a story that Eric Berger at Ars Technica related on the 11th.  As a senior journalist with many good sources, he gets invited to the big events and passes on a story that doesn't sound good:

Early on Saturday morning, after Starliner successfully landed in New Mexico without its crew on board, I attended a press conference at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. There were six chairs set up at the table for officials. A week before, NASA had sent out a press release announcing this post-landing news conference, noting that two senior officials from Boeing—Mark Nappi and John Shannon—would be in attendance.

But at about 12:20 am, 10 minutes before the news conference was due to start, two of the chairs were removed. I asked a NASA spokesperson what was happening and was told that I'd have to ask Boeing. Shannon and Nappi were no-shows at the news conference.

Boeing decided, soon after the Starliner mission ended, not to attend this conference? Were there more problems than just the "one of 12 control jets" failing that haven't been reported? Was it the same one that failed to ignite every time or was it a different thruster every time they tried to fire them, but still only one of the 12 at any time?  Eric goes on to suggest, "one possible explanation is that Boeing has decided it will exit the Commercial Crew Program."  

Third story: This one is today. More than 33,000 unionized Boeing workers went on strike today. In doing so, they rejected the deal their union had made with the company. It has (thankfully) been many years since I had any management responsibilities and what I knew about the subject of unions and what's legal has gone through enough half lives of decay that I remember essentially none of it. 

The rejected deal tried and failed to win over workers by offering a 25 percent wage increase and promised to build Boeing's next jet in the Puget Sound region in Washington, which Boeing claimed offered "job security for generations to come."

But after International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) District 751 president Jon Holden urged the union to accept the deal—which Boeing said was the "largest-ever general wage increase" in the company's history—hundreds of Boeing employees immediately began resisting ahead of a Thursday vote that ultimately doomed the deal

Taking these three all together, a possible picture emerges of a company in a severe pinch - if not in "life or death" trouble. They're facing big changes to Starliner that has already cost them well over what they can make from it. The cost to redesign and certify the new one has potentially taken a couple of jumps: the new failures on reentry and now the increasing costs of labor.  I know their new CEO has promised to keep going and make it right, but I don't know how long that can hold up and how long they can absorb the higher costs. Can he be overruled by the Board of Directors (or whatever they're called)? 

And now for something completely, radically different.

Back to Polaris Dawn. A look at what was up today led to a totally unexpected treat posted to X. Sarah Gillis, the SpaceX engineer who took part in the EVA or spacewalk yesterday, is also a musician.  Sarah brought a violin into space and played with a handful of groups of musicians around the globe. 

The song in the video, "Rey's Theme," was written by John Williams for "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" and was performed by Gillis aboard the Polaris Dawn mission's Crew Dragon spacecraft. In the video, Gillis can be seen playing the song's solo violin part alongside videos of orchestras performing the song in studios and on soundstages.

"Inspired by the universal language of music and the relentless fight against childhood cancers and diseases, this moment was created with the hope of inspiring the next generation to look towards the stars," the Polaris Program wrote on its website. The video was created in partnership with with St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, for whom the Polaris Program is raising money throughout the mission, and El Sistema USA, a program that aims to promote music education "for positive societal impact."

A still from "Harmony of Resilience," a music video released in space on Sept. 13, 2024 by the Polaris Program during its five-day Polaris Dawn mission. (Image credit: Polaris Program via X)

That's One Small Walk for a Man

Credit where credit is due, that headline is not my creation; rather it belongs to Stephen Green at PJ Media (also known as VodkaPundit), who wrote, “That's One Small Walk for a Man (and a Woman)...”  To further borrow his opening line:

The privately funded Polaris Dawn human space mission just kind of casually reached the highest orbit in more than 50 years on Wednesday and on Thursday conducted the first civilian spacewalks to just as little fanfare.

That's really the most succinct way of summing up the mission to date. To borrow the frequently used line from the old commercials, "but wait! There's more." While the first day of the mission marked the milestone of reaching the highest altitude a crew has been since the last Apollo mission crossed that altitude on the way back to Earth, the last mission to orbit at that altitude for an extended time was Gemini 11 in 1966.  That flight was crewed by Pete Conrad and Dick Gordon - both of whom have passed on. The two would fly together to the moon on Apollo 12. Pete Conrad walked on the moon while Dick Gordon had the job of  being "the loneliest man in the universe" - the Command Module pilot.

These two legends of the astronaut corps had their record broken by four young and newly minted astronauts. The experienced two were commander Jared Isaacman, billionaire tech entrepreneur, and pilot Scott Poteet, U.S. Air Force, retired. The two new astronauts on their first flight were SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis, and Anna Menon. Both Gillis and Menon are on their first flight to orbit, got that altitude record, and Sarah Gillis got to do a spacewalk on her first trip to space! Anna Menon is serving as medical officer for the flight.

Wednesday, as the Polaris Dawn capsule was slowly increasing its orbital apogee, they were also slowly and methodically having their air pressure reduced while increasing the percent oxygen. This is done to reduce the amount of nitrogen dissolved in their blood, to reduce the possibility of decompression sickness. I know they were doing other things and not just sitting there noticing their breathing, but I find no references to what they were doing.

While the walk was supposed to start earlier, 2:23 AM EDT, it didn't start until just about four hours later: 6:12 AM. The start isn't when they open the hatch, it's when they start bleeding the air out of the Dragon while doing some functional checks on their suits. I watched both of them do their spacewalks and they weren't dramatic - a good thing - but were functional tests of different aspects of the suits, while supported by specialized hatch hardware designed just for this mission and known as "Skywalker." Similarly, the EVA wasn't over when Isaacman and Gillis had completed their tests, it was declared over when the cabin had repressurized and returned to the conventional Oxygen/Nitrogen mix used.  According to SpaceX, that was 7:58 AM EDT. 

A detailed look at getting through the stages to take today's spacewalks. From SpaceX.

I've been looking for links to videos of the two spacewalks themselves, something on the order of the 10 minutes doing tests on Skywalker. There are short videos on SpaceX's page on X.  A minute and change of Isaacman's with his notable quote, "SpaceX, back at home we have a lot of work to do, but from here it looks like a perfect world." Plus a shorter one (that repeats) of Sarah Gillis' walk.  The SpaceX page on X also has a long video (3 hrs 15 minutes) that you could look around in here. 

I watched the NASASpaceflight.com coverage, which was then posted as a 3 hr 19 minute video. They don't even approach opening the hatch until almost 1 hr 54 minutes into the video (01:53:30). 

Returning to where I started, with VodkaPundit's article, I think he ends it really well, on a good note.  All props to him for this perspective.

What Polaris Dawn and other SpaceX missions remind me of is NASA's Mercury and Gemini missions of the 1960s. There were numerous technological [hurdles] to be overcome and skills to be learned before the Apollo program could take its final shape and send men to the moon.
...
NASA also had to learn about known unknowns, like whether radiation in space would sicken or kill our astronauts in higher orbits. The men who performed those Mercury and Gemini missions, from Alan Shepard on Freedom 7 to Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin on Gemini 12, were pioneers in every sense of the word. What they accomplished made Apollo possible. Without them, JFK's challenge to land a man on the moon before 1970 would have been a largely forgotten speech by a dead president.

Elon Musk wants to send humans to Mars (eventually including himself), preferably beginning in 2028. SpaceX, like NASA in the '60s, has to learn many lessons before that becomes possible.

SpaceX's genius play is that Musk has figured out how to get other people to help pay for his R&D — and I don't mean your tax dollars. Polaris Dawn was funded by Isaacman. While the billionaire refuses to say how much he paid, I'd be shocked if it was anything less than $200 million, and I wouldn't be too surprised if it turned out to be double that.
...
Isaacman is getting what he wants, and SpaceX is getting the data and experience it needs to keep pushing the boundaries of human space travel.

So if anyone tells you that Polaris Dawn is just some rich man's stunt, you can tell them the truth. It was one small walk for a man and woman, and one giant leap for mankind.