The two big vehicles launched Thursday, Blue Origin's New Glenn and SpaceX's Starship SuperHeavy flight test have both been grounded pending completion of FAA mishap investigations.
I think most of you are familiar with both missions and know that New Glenn lost the first stage while Starship lost the upper stage. The need for a mishap investigation of New Glenn apparently wasn't known until late Friday the 17th and wasn't published there on SpaceNews until Saturday the 18th. The story was then updated on Sunday.
Blue Origin was originally quite pleased with the maiden flight of the New Glenn, at least in public.
“Our Blue Ring Pathfinder hit all our mission objectives within the planned six-hour journey after being inserted into the desired orbit by New Glenn with an apogee of 19,300 km and a perigee of 2,400 km at a 30-degree inclination,” Dave Limp, Blue Origin’s chief executive, said in a social media post Jan. 17.
Limp added that the upper stage “nailed insertion with a less than 1% deviation from our exact orbital injection target.” Data from the U.S. Space Force’s Space-Track.org service show the upper stage in an orbit of 2,426 by 19,251 kilometers at an inclination of 29.99 degrees.
What Dave Limp didn't mention was what happened to the first stage. In a scenario similar to SpaceX's loss of the upper stage, telemetry from the first stage, displayed on the launch webcast like SpaceX, froze at about T+7:55, around the scheduled end of a three-engine reentry burn. The last data point was at an altitude of 84,225 feet (25,672 m) so higher than most commercial aviation but far from being considered in space and was traveling at 4285 miles per hour, much faster than commercial aviation.
As with other investigations I know of, it's being led by the ones who would know the most about the vehicle and the mission; in this case, Blue Origin.
“We’re working closely with the FAA and submitted our initial findings within 24 hours. Our goal is to fly New Glenn again this spring,” the company said in a Jan. 19 statement to SpaceNews. The company added that it considered the launch a success because reaching orbit was the “lone objective” and that landing the booster would have been a “bonus.”
The only objections I've seen to the flight was some saying they put the Blue
Ring Pathfinder into an orbit that's too high and therefore doesn't comply
with orbital debris mitigation guidelines. They say that while the orbit
avoids highly populated regions of low and medium Earth orbit, a
breakup could create debris that migrates into those orbits. Blue Origin
said, “Our second stage is in a compliant disposal orbit and meets the
requirements for inerting and safing the stage so it doesn’t become a debris
risk.”
The FAA mishap investigation for Starship was pretty much initiated immediately and was talked about on Friday. Many of you have seen the videos or photos of the debris reentering the atmosphere taken from the Turks and Caicos Islands at the eastern end of the string of islands containing the Bahamas and north of Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. There have been reports of air traffic controllers re-routing aircraft to reduce the chances of hitting debris and some aircraft being routed to other destinations if they said they were low on fuel.
"During the event, the FAA activated a Debris Response Area and briefly slowed aircraft outside the area where space vehicle debris was falling or stopped aircraft at their departure location," the agency added. "Several aircraft requested to divert due to low fuel levels while holding outside impacted areas."
In both cases, the FAA must review and approve the companies responses to their mishap investigations.
Blue Origin's New Glenn lifts off on its first flight Jan. 16. Credit: Blue Origin
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