SpaceX Has a Falcon 9 Fail

For the first time in a long time, SpaceX had an upper stage anomaly on last night's Starlink launch from Vandenberg SFB in California. Ars Technica reports that was the first Falcon 9 launch failure after 344 successful launches. It's probably important to note this was not the booster, the reused portion of the Falcon 9, but rather the upper stage, which flies once and then is directed to reenter where it will splash into the ocean.

If you've watched the videos on any of these missions, you know the typical progression is they burn the first stage, drop that and ignite the second stage for a relatively short period and then shut it down for a half hour to an hour. Then they relight the second stage to finalize the orbit for the satellites by raising the lowest point in the orbit, the perigee. That's the point where the second stage engine self-destructed; a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly or RUD.  The first stage landed successfully, which we've come to expect.

There are reports that observers felt they were seeing too much ice on the vacuum Merlin engine, typically called an M-Vac, during the first burn and that more ice than typical was falling off the engine. Some of that is evident in this photo:

Numerous pieces of ice fell off the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket during its climb into orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. Image credit: SpaceX.

The FAA has declared that they are "requiring an investigation" and would work with SpaceX on corrective actions. 

“The FAA is aware an anomaly occurred during the SpaceX Starlink Group 9-3 mission that launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on July 11. The incident involved the failure of the upper stage rocket while it was in space. No public injuries or public property damage have been reported. The FAA is requiring an investigation.

An investigation is designed to further enhance public safety, determine the root cause of the event, and identify corrective actions to avoid it from happening again.

The FAA will be involved in every step of the investigation process and must approve SpaceX’s final report, including any corrective actions.

A return flight is based on the FAA determining that any system, process, or procedure related to the mishap does not affect public safety. In addition, SpaceX may need to request and receive approval from the FAA to modify its license that incorporates any corrective actions and meet all other licensing requirements.”

Chances are the loss of the 20 Starlink satellites - if they actually lose all 20 - isn't a big deal to SpaceX, but let's assume they lose all 20. At the rate they launch satellites, I'd guess that's a week of production for SpaceX, if that much. They launch two or three of these 20 satellite missions every week. 

The issue is going to be Falcon 9s are grounded until the FAA says they can fly again. That means Crew 9 is on hold in mid-August, as well as the Polaris Dawn mission set for NET July 31. Then there are the one or two other missions for everyone on Earth that they've been launching every week. 

Going into Thursday's mission, the current version of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, known as the Falcon 9 Block 5, was indisputably the most reliable launch vehicle in history. Since debuting in May 2018, the Falcon 9 Block 5, which NASA has certified for astronaut flights, never had a mission failure in all of its 297 launches before the ill-fated Starlink 9-3 mission.

Let's see - 1 failure on the 298th launch is a failure rate of 0.34%, or a success rate of 99.66%. It's easy to laugh at the FAA anomaly investigation, but as long as they don't muck up the schedule too much, if there's a way to knock that up to "five nines" or 99.999%, it would be interesting to see it.

Small Space News Story Roundup 39

Just because:

Poland Launches First Rocket to Reach Space

According to European Spaceflight (.com!) the Łukasiewicz Institute of Aviation has made history with the launch of its ILR-33 Amber 2K rocket from the Andøya Space Centre in Norway. It's the first time a rocket designed and built in Poland has made it to space, but it's still a work in progress. Perhaps that's better said as "technically made it to space."

The ILR-33 Amber 2k rocket was launched on its first space shot on 3 July from the Norwegian launch facility. Powered by a hybrid core stage and two solid-fuel boosters, the rocket reached an altitude of 101 kilometers, which is above the generally accepted boundary separating Earth’s atmosphere from outer space, known as the Kármán Line.

“The crossing of the space barrier by the ILR-33 AMBER 2K rocket developed at the Łukasiewicz – Institute of Aviation is a historic moment,” said Dr. Michał Wierciński, Vice President of the Polish Space Agency. “Never in our history has a Polish rocket reached such a level. This is a historic day for the Łukasiewicz – Institute of Aviation, but also a historic moment for the entire Polish rocket community.”

The development of the ILR-33 rocket has been going on for a decade - since 2014 - and they've launched three times so far. The last flight in 2019 made it to 23 km, and they developed an upgraded variant with larger, more powerful strap-on boosters. 

To this observer, they still have a long way to go, but I'm glad to see it. They didn't claim to have made orbit, just that they made it to the generally accepted definition of space at 100 km. They can enjoy the accomplishment and begin work on a version that can put small payloads in orbit, like under a metric ton. Sort of a Polish version of the Rocket Lab Electron.

The ILR-33 Amber 2K rocket. Image credit: Łukasiewicz Institute of Aviation 

Congress to NASA: find more customers for SLS

And I can't resist the subtitle to the source article: “Because I'm tall enough, I'm orange enough, and doggone it, Senators like me.”  Shades of Stuart Smalley from back when Saturday Day Night Live was funny more often.

There's a strange little section stuck into NASA's new reauthorization bill making its way out of the committees and into the budget - should they actually pass one. 

The section is titled "Reaffirmation of the Space Launch System," and in it Congress asserts its commitment to a flight rate of twice per year for the rocket. The reauthorization legislation, which cleared a House committee on Wednesday, also said NASA should identify other customers for the rocket.

"The Administrator shall assess the demand for the Space Launch System by entities other than NASA and shall break out such demand according to the relevant Federal agency or nongovernment sector," the legislation states.

Twice a year is about 4x the actual SLS launch rate of once every two years - and that's being generous. Congress further requires NASA respond within 180 days, explaining how they can achieve the twice a year rate for SLS and Artemis. 

Additionally, Congress is asking for NASA to study demand for the SLS rocket and estimate "cost and schedule savings for reduced transit times" for deep space missions due to the "unique capabilities" of the rocket. The space agency also must identify any "barriers or challenges" that could impede use of the rocket by other entities other than NASA, and estimate the cost of overcoming those barriers.

How do they achieve that? Let me 'splain it to you. NFW. No way. 

For newbies who don't know the back story, the SLS program was created at the end of the Space Shuttle program to keep the gravy train flowing to the contractors - so they could keep skimming the congress critters' share of that gravy back to them. There might be something new about the details of the SLS, but it's virtually entirely recycled hardware from the Shuttle era. It reuses engines that actually flew on Shuttles over 15 years ago, for God's sake.

Congress created the SLS rocket 14 years ago with the NASA Authorization Act of 2010. The large rocket kept a river of contracts flowing to large aerospace companies, including Boeing and Northrop Grumman, who had been operating the Space Shuttle. Congress then lavished tens of billions of dollars on the contractors over the years for development, often authorizing more money than NASA said it needed. Congressional support was unwavering, at least in part because the SLS program boasts that it has jobs in every state.

Under the original law, the SLS rocket was supposed to achieve "full operational capability" by the end of 2016. The first launch of the SLS vehicle did not take place until late 2022, six years later. It was entirely successful. However, due to various reasons, the rocket will not fly again until September 2025 at the earliest.

As for the "unique capabilities" of the SLS, more bullcrap. It costs over $2.5 billion to launch an SLS. When the Europa Clipper program was told to use the SLS, they (somehow) got their mission moved to a Falcon Heavy. A single recycled Space Shuttle Main Engine on the SLS costs $146 million. That's per engine and there are four of them on the SLS core stage. Compare that to NASA's entire cost for the Falcon Heavy: the total for the Falcon Heavy launch services is approximately $178 million.

If you think NASA is nothing but government waste, you're not exactly right. It's not 100% waste but think of the old Ivory soap commercials: it's 99 and 44/100% waste.

Today's NASA Conference About Starliner

In a word, I'd have to say, "meh." I didn't get much new out of it, if anything. 

The video conference was at 11 AM EDT, a telecast from the International Space Station. A summary is online at Blogs.NASA.gov which includes a link to a 22 minute video of Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams answering questions.  Following the crew news conference, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program Manager Steve Stich and Boeing Commercial Crew Program Manager and Vice President Mark Nappi spoke extensively about the mission and testing plans ahead of the Crew Flight Test (CFT) return. This wasn't a video, but rather a roughly 70 minute meeting that was broadcast. You can listen to a replay of the leadership briefing on YouTube; not moving video, just audio. 

The bottom line, though is that the ground testing of the thrusters at White Sands, New Mexico hasn't repeated the issues seen in space as Starliner was approaching the ISS. 

“The temperatures we have been able to achieve are not quite what we would have hoped for based on the flight data,” said Steve Stich, NASA commercial crew program manager. He said engineers used heaters to try to replicate the thermal conditions experienced by the thrusters from the firing itself as well as exposure to the sun.

The thrusters in Starliner's Service Module are housed in “doghouses” and the idea being investigated is that those little housings might retain more heat than previously modeled. During reentry, the Reaction Control Thrusters used for rendezvous and docking aren't used as much as bigger thrusters in the Service Module. 

Mark Nappi, Boeing vice president and commercial crew program manager, said engineers are working on a “little bit over 30” actions linked to both the thruster problems and helium leaks, of which more than half have been completed. All of them are scheduled to be wrapped up by the end of next week.

While there was talk around the web today saying Starliner might be coming home by the end of July, the audio conference doesn't seem to support that. The next obvious date for the Starliner to depart the ISS is the next crew rotation mission, Crew 9, penciled in for mid-August. The usual protocol is for the new Crew to dock at the ISS and overlap with the the departing crew (Crew 8) for around a week. For both Crew 8 and 9's capsules to be docked to the ISS would ordinarily mean Starliner would leave before Crew 9 got there. There is such a thing as an “indirect handover,” though, where the Crew-8 Crew Dragon departs before the Crew-9 mission launches, rather than the preferred approach of having the two crews overlap on the station for several days. 

All of which combines to make me think the whole thing is still “up in the air,” so to speak. (No, it's above the air. Sorry.) There is no particular news here about when the Starliner CFT is going to be declared done. Could be the end of July; could be the end of August or any date before or after. There are no indications that ground-based testing has been successful or that any good information has come out of it. SSDD. Same Situation Different Day.

Starliner docked to the ISS earlier in June. Image credit: NASA

Ariane 6 First Flight "Nominal"

Today's lift off from Guiana. Image credit: ESA with some contrast enhancement by me

The first headline I saw said the mission was flawless but as time went by, that was revised to say, “Ariane 6 reaches orbit with long-awaited first flight.” In fact, the story that link takes you to has URL that says, "performs-flawlessly-on-long-awaited-first-flight" and the title has been changed on the article it links to. 

The Ariane 6 rocket lifted off from the Kourou launch site in French Guiana at 3:01 p.m. Eastern (1901 UTC) July 9. Launch followed a short delay due to a data acquisition system issue.
...
The first separation command, seeing the deployment of the OOV-Cube, Curium One and Robusta-3A, took place one hour five minutes into flight with the Ariane 6 upper stage in a circular, 577-kilometer-altitude orbit. Experiments YPSat and Peregrinus, attached to the upper stage, were also initiated.
...
Three further separations were due to follow at time of first reporting. 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*.

The issue is only expected to affect the end of the mission, according to ESA. A first passivation maneuver of the upper stage was planned for two hours 40 minutes into the flight. The agency announced a press conference to follow at 6:30 p.m. Eastern. The final release was intended to see capsules reenter the atmosphere and fall into the Pacific Ocean as part of the deorbit maneuver.

Despite the snag/SNAFU with the APU, the ESA seems pretty happy with the mission, coming as it does years later than originally planned. Its debut was originally envisioned to take place in 2020, the slippage was due to both factors under their control and others (COVID-19). The important part is that it's flying now, and with some more work on the APU, it may be ready to start getting Europe back into space. Arianespace already has a log of 30 launches on backorder. 

“This is just the first step,” Josef Aschbacher, director general of ESA, said on X ahead of launch. “We have lots of work to do yet, but we are laser-focused on changing the future of the European space transportation ecosystem.”

Japan's H3 Has Its First Successful Flight

In a piece of news I have to admit got by me with last week's atypical schedule is that Japan launched the first successful mission of their new H3 rocket on July 1. The mission was the third flight of the H3 and the first that the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) declared to be a success. The H3 rocket launched the Daichi 4 satellite, also known as ALOS-4, with a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) for all-weather observations of Earth's surface. 

“It was truly a perfect launch, a perfect 100 out of 100,” said Makoto Arita, the JAXA H3 project team manager.

You might remember that the first test flight of the H3 in March of '23 failed when the second stage malfunctioned and a $200 million Earth observation satellite was lost on the doomed rocket. A second test flight of the H3 rocket this past February was successful, and this time the launcher only carried small test payloads. 

H3 is expected to become the workhorse for the Japanese space agency for the next decade. Despite no mention of reusability, JAXA is targeting flying six times per year, up from the cadence of three flights per year achieved by the H-IIA rocket, the vehicle the H3 will replace. There are two more H-IIA flights left to fly this year - the fiscal year in Japan runs through March 2025. 

Japan views a stable and commercially competitive space transport capacity as essential not only for its space program but also for its national security needs.

Japan's new flagship H3 rocket is launched from Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima Prefecture on Monday. Image Credit JIJI

SpaceX Teases Flight Test 5

In a short video released Thursday, possibly to celebrate Independence Day with the world's biggest rocket's red glare, SpaceX provided a highlight video of the most recent test of Starship, Flight Test 4. 

During the flight, the first stage of the rocket performed well during ascent and, after separating from the upper stage, made a controlled reentry into the Gulf of Mexico. The Starship upper stage appeared to make a nominal flight through space before making a controlled—if fiery—landing in the Indian Ocean.

The new video focuses mostly on the "Super Heavy" booster stage and its entry into the Gulf. There is new footage from a camera on top of the 71-meter-tall first stage as well as a nearby buoy at water level. The video from the buoy, in particular, shows the first stage making an upright landing into the ocean.

Then the video switches to the mind-blowing video snippets of Starship reentering, with the flaps being melted and breaking apart as it descends, molten metal or other debris obstructing the camera's view until we hear the call out that Starship has shut off its engines after its own splashdown. 

The tease comes after all that. The video goes from the splashdown to cheering people at headquarters in Hawthorne, California. The screen goes black for three seconds and then switches to an image looking up into the sky, through Starship's monstrous launch tower at Starbase Boca Chica. Then we notice the two "chopsticks," are spread a bit. The perspective turns to looking at the tower from the distance and it becomes an animation, where we see the booster moving toward the chopsticks. With Starship's first stage descending back toward the launch tower and slowing the title "Flight 5" appears and the video goes black before the booster is caught. 

Is it real? Are they going to try to catch the booster in IFT-5? In the talk after IFT-4, Musk had said they'd try to catch the booster next flight. That was repeated recently with the phrase "in the next month." 

In a talk last week with local residents in south Texas, Starbase General Manager Kathy Lueders said this attempt might not occur on Flight 5.

The video being released after GM Lueders made the statement sure makes it seem like the attempt is back in consideration.  

NASA Hires SpaceX to Launch Another New Space Telescope

NASA announced on Tuesday the 2nd they've awarded a contract to SpaceX to launch a small research satellite designed to study the violent processes behind the creation and destruction of chemical elements. The telescope's launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is expected in 2027, although no more specific date was given. Added to the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, and Europa Clipper (not simply a telescope) both of which will ride Falcon Heavy to space is why I said "Another."

The Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI) mission features a gamma-ray telescope that will scan the sky to study gamma-rays emitted by the explosions of massive stars and the end of their lives. These supernova explosions generate reactions that fuse new atomic nuclei, a process called nucleosynthesis, of heavier elements.

Using data from COSI, scientists will map where these elements are forming in the Milky Way galaxy. COSI's observations will also yield new insights into the annihilation of positrons, the antimatter equivalent of electrons, which appear to be originating from the center of the galaxy. Another goal for COSI will be to rapidly report the location of short gamma-ray bursts, unimaginably violent explosions that flash and then fade in just a couple of seconds. These bursts are likely caused by merging neutron stars.

The COSI mission will be sensitive to so-called soft gamma rays, a relatively unexplored segment of the electromagnetic spectrum. The telescope is based on a design scientists have flown on research balloon flights.

COSI is relatively small satellite, less than a ton, and built by Northrop Grumman. It will ride alone on a Falcon 9 because of the peculiar orbit it requires takes as much energy as delivering a much larger satellite to geosynchronous orbit.  COSI will operate in an unusual orbit about 340 miles over the equator, an orbit chosen to avoid interference from radiation over the South Atlantic Anomaly, the region where the inner Van Allen radiation belt comes closest to Earth’s surface.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 will deliver COSI directly into its operational orbit after taking off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, then will fire its upper stage in a sideways maneuver to make a turn at the equator. This type of maneuver, called a plane change, takes a lot of energy, or delta-V, on par with the delta-V required to put a heavier satellite into a much higher orbit.

The contract is what appears to be SpaceX's preferred type, "firm-fixed price," like they bid to design the Deorbit Vehicle for the Space Station, for $69 million. In 2019 NASA paid SpaceX about $43 million for the launch of the similarly sized IXPE X-ray telescope into a similar orbit as COSI. The 37% higher price seems pretty close to the damage done by inflation. What else that you buy isn't up in price since 2019? 

Artist's concept rendering of COSI with some cool gamma ray colors that are quite invisible in real life. Image credit: Northrop Grumman/European Southern Observatory (background image)

Lawfare Against SpaceX? Say it Ain't So !

A couple of weeks ago, the FAA closed public comments to a proposal for SpaceX adding a second Starship launch complex on the Kennedy Space Center. That linked piece focuses on a few comments from people who live around the Cape and while they certainly matter, they're not from the population that would be most affected, the people who work on the Cape itself. 

Today we learned that United Launch Alliance and Blue Origin have filed objections to SpaceX's plans for expansion. ULA and Blue both raised concerns about the impact of Starship launch operations on their own activities on the Space Center. 

Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, called Blue Origin's filing with the FAA "an obviously disingenuous response. Not cool of them to try (for the third time) to impede SpaceX’s progress by lawfare."
...
The FAA and SpaceX are preparing an environmental impact statement for launches and landings of the Super Heavy booster and Starship rocket at Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC), while the US Space Force is working with SpaceX on a similar environmental review for Starship flights from Space Launch Complex 37 at nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS).

Just to be clear, here's a labeled aerial photo of the pads. The KSC/CCSFS "property line" is somewhere between SLC-41 and LC-39A - I'm not 100% sure, but I think that pad between SLC-40 and LC-39A that's not in a pink box is SLC-41 that was built to launch the Titan III and IV vehicles.

Image credit: NASA (with labels by Ars Technica)

SpaceX launches Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets from Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center and Falcon 9s from Pad 40 (including manned flights starting with Polaris Dawn) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The company plans to develop Starship launch infrastructure at Pad 39A and Pad 37. United Launch Alliance flies Vulcan and Atlas V rockets from Pad 41, and Blue Origin will base its New Glenn rocket at Pad 36.

Both ULA and Blue have expressed concerns that SpaceX's pace of operations will make working so close to them force the two of them to a slower cadence. 

During the environmental review process, the FAA should weigh how regular flights of the reusable Starship—as many as 120 launches per year, according to TechCrunch—will affect other launch providers operating at Cape Canaveral, ULA and Blue Origin said. SpaceX's final proposed launch cadence from each site will be part of draft environmental assessments released for public comment as soon as the end of this year.

SpaceX plans to launch Starlink satellites, customer payloads, and missions to support NASA's Artemis lunar landings from the launch pads in Florida. Getting a launch pad up and running in Florida is one of several schedule hurdles facing SpaceX's program to develop a human-rated lunar lander version of Starship, alongside demonstrating orbital refueling.

Starship/Super Heavy launches and landings "are expected to have a greater environmental impact than any other launch system currently operating at KSC or CCSFS," Blue Origin wrote in their filing. Starship is the largest, most powerful rocket in history and SpaceX is said to be working to make it bigger. ULA's filing was a little more direct:

"It’s a very, very large rocket, and getting bigger," wrote Tory Bruno, ULA's CEO, in a post on X. "That quantity of propellant requires an evacuation zone whenever fueled that includes other people’s facilities. A (weekly) launch has injurious sound levels all the way into town. The Cape isn’t meant for a monopoly."
...
"The total launch capacity of the Cape will go down if other providers are forced to evacuate their facilities whenever a vehicle is fueled," Bruno wrote.

We know, for example, that for fueling operations, the keep out zone at Boca Chica is set to 1.5 miles, while for Starship test flights, that has been pushed back to 3 miles. ULA's pad 41 is 2.2 miles from pad 39A, definitely inside that 3 mile zone. ULA has said these hazards could prevent it from fulfilling its contracts to launch critical national security satellites for the US military. One could just as well argue "critical national security" launches would take precedence over regular commercial operations of Starship, though.

It seems to me that while expansion of the Kennedy Space Center is going to be limited, it may be time to renew the talk about Launch Complex 49 (last story of three). It's the top tight, blue-striped rectangle marked "Notional LC-49" on this map. 

A story made the local news today that the Florida legislature passed a bill to develop two more large scale launch complexes in the state that went into effect on July 1. The most reasonable to me is near the old Homestead Air Force Base and now called Homestead Air Reserve Base, and the second is in the western panhandle portion of Florida, near Tyndall Air Force Base. Tyndall is close to Panama City Beach, a rather popular winter visit for southerners. Homestead is more reasonable for two reasons, the first is that being on the east coast, it would launch out over the Atlantic for mostly easterly trajectories; the second reason is being a couple of hundred miles farther south than the Cape, it gets just a little more of the extra velocity the Earth's rotation gives rockets launching here. Tyndall would have to launch more southerly, perhaps polar or sun synchronous orbits, like Vandenberg.  Easterly launches would be over far too much populated state.

It could well introduce inconveniences for a company to have to support Homestead and the Cape, but I don't know how bad those costs are. The source article on Ars Technica talks about how other US launch providers, Firefly, and Alpha for example are moving to, and Rocket Lab has already moved to Wallops Island, Virginia rather than deal with the crowded facilities of the Cape area.

Surprise! Starliner Can Stay at the ISS Another 45 Days

It's startling, I know, but NASA and Boeing say the Starliner is doing so well it can stay there another 45 days, making the original 8 day mission into 90 days. The Space.com article is a bit long and roundabout, but the money quote is here:

"We've been looking at those batteries and their performance on orbit. They're getting recharged by station, and that risk hasn't really changed. So the risk for the next 45 days is essentially the same as the first 45 days," he said.

The article references the extended thruster testing mentioned Monday, in which they'll test the thrusters in as close to flight usage as they can get on the ground. That was talked about as starting as early as Tuesday the 2nd but there's no news confirming that or updating in any way.

The big obstacle is that these thrusters are in the Service Module which will be jettisoned and burned up on reentry, so that it's not possible to examine the actual thrusters that had the problem. That means to be as thorough troubleshooting as they want, they need to do as much as possible before they jettison the SM. 

In operation, Starliner will fly the six month missions that Crew Dragon flies, technically rated at 210 days, so extending this to 90 days shouldn't be an issue as long as there aren't things they do differently to Starliner for those longer flights. As for the batteries themselves:

When Space.com asked how long the mission could continue, Stich said, "We haven't decided how long to extend it yet." Starliner has 12 different batteries, he explained. Before this flight, similar batteries sat on the ground for a year and were then tested to make sure there were no defects, and none were found.

"What we really are doing now is looking at the performance of the battery in flight. We don't see any degradation in any of the cells where the batteries are," he added.

Starliner docked to the ISS. Image credit: NASA

It seems like we may as well stop tracking this. There's no mention of a target date for the end of the mission, another 45 days, or 90 from June 6, sounds like early September. All we can do is just wait and see what they tell us next.

Speaking of dates, I see that on July 3rd, SpaceX and Jared Isaacman announced a target date for the Polaris Dawn mission that will feature the world's first space walk by a non-military or government astronaut. The date is July 31. Another feature of the mission is that it will fly higher than any manned flights since the end of the Apollo era. Polaris Dawn's orbit will take the mission about 435 miles above the Earth. For comparison, the ISS orbits around 250 miles up.

Happy Independence Day - 2024

I've run this post almost every July 4th in the 14 years I've been blogging.  There were only two years I didn't and both of those posts were about problems that must have seemed really big. They not only were really big but still are (2012, 2014).  My lesson is that while they were important, the big picture is to remind ourselves of the history, and enjoy the day with family and friends.  The problems will still be here on the fifth. On Glenn Beck's program today, he said maybe we should make it a point to reread the Declaration of Independence. I think that's especially important if you still have kids at home. 

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America  

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
 
He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. 

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. 

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. 

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. 

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within. 

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands. 

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers. 

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. 

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance. 

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature. 

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation: 

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: 

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states: 

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world: 

For imposing taxes on us without our consent: 

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury: 

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses: 

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies: 

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments: 

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. 

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us. 

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. 

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation. 

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands. 

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. 

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. 

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends. 

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
 

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It has been shown mathematically that in a system with multiple parties, they either converge to two declared parties or through something like a coalition system they functionally become a two party system. In our society, we are too broken apart along party lines, despite the idea of one big “uniparty” now being the subject of millions of jokes and other comments.  In reality, the important choice is a question of whether or not the politico you're referring to is a follower of our founding documents or someone else's. Right now, it appears the biggest competing idea is a tyrannical minority in the name of some form equality, equity or some such nonsense. The biggest competitor is Karl Marx. People are not, and cannot be both free and equal. We are either free or forced into subjugation to create equal outcomes. Opportunities can be equal, like that word that used to be a goal but is now punishable: colorblind. Outcomes can't be.

Enjoy your day no matter what you do. To those who serve - and have served - to provide this gift of liberty for us:  Thank You from the bottom of my heart.

Keep an Eye on Beryl and Starbase

As always around this time of year, it kind of becomes a hobby of mine to watch the tropics and whatever is going on. Needless to say, this week has been focused on what became Hurricane Beryl and watching the predictions. The storm track has always been fairly narrow, meaning the models tended to be in agreement. A minor exception is that a couple of days ago, the forecast approach to Jamaica drifted away from the island but then started drifting back. As of now, it looks like the south side of Jamaica is going to get hammered. As of the 5PM update, Beryl was no longer Cat 5 with winds at 165, but at 8PM, she's still a strong Cat 4 with winds of 150 mph. Very little infrastructure, even well built, can take that. This prediction chart can be found at the National Hurricane Center.

I want to draw your attention to the westernmost end of the predicted track, showing the storm going ashore in Mexico as a tropical storm at 2PM Sunday. The expansion of the track as the 5 days goes by is normal, and I've seen everything from about this width to giant circles at 5 days when the models don't agree.  The way the end of the path goes asymmetric, with a kink around where the date/time is 2PM Saturday, is an indication the models are leaning toward the storm curving more northerly toward the end. Here's the plot of the 1800Z UTC (2PM EDT) model runs from Tropical Tidbits, a good, geeky place to get info.

You can see a few traces toward the top of the path, and those are like the the bubble showing a bias to that direction.

SpaceX's Starbase Boca Chica is essentially at the Texas/Mexico border not quite half the diameter of that circle above the point of impact in the NHC forecast above. The blue lines at the bottom of the model runs are the UK Meterological Office, or UKMET models, which over the years have garnered my respect for being right quite often. That argues it probably will take the centerline that the Hurricane Center plot above it shows. Probably.

How do we know what to expect? We don't know. We have to wait and find out. Chances are that by the time the storm hits the Yucatan peninsula around the northern border of Belize early Friday morning, we'll have a better idea where this is going. If every run of the models keeps pushing the storm further north and east, keep up with those models.

The potential impacts to Starbase obviously go up the closer landfall gets to the base. At some point, and it might be Thursday (?), they're going to have to start preparing for the storm. It's hard to imagine the storm can generate as much force as the launch mount gets from a Super Heavy, but it's just as hard to imagine nothing gets thrown around in the wind.

 

Starliner is NOT "Stranded in Space"

NASA wants you to know that Starliner is feeling much better and is now fine. Probably. They just need to do some more tests to find out just how "fine" it is. And besides, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are not stranded. They're perfectly safe. NASA and Boeing pushed back on Friday against the rumors you see everywhere to make all that clear.

Batteries on this Starliner spacecraft were initially only certified for a 45-day mission duration, but NASA officials said they are looking at extending the limit after confirming the batteries are functioning well.

“We have the luxury of time," said Ken Bowersox, associate administrator for NASA's space operations mission directorate. “We’re still in the middle of a test mission. We’re still pressing forward."

What's beyond questioning is that Starliner Crewed Flight Test, CFT-1, was intended to stay on the ISS around eight days, which would have been until around Friday, June 14, but that was delayed within three days of its arrival at the station, on June 9, three weeks ago.  About two weeks after that, we started hearing that "yes, but" story that Starliner was only cleared for a 45 day mission to the ISS. If we start on the launch day, 45 days is until July 21, a Sunday. Now NASA says they're looking at extending the limit beyond 45 days (although they didn't offer another number) after they confirm the batteries can make it. 

Steve Stich, manager of NASA's commercial crew program, said Friday that he wanted to clear up "misunderstandings" that led to headlines claiming the Starliner spacecraft was stuck or stranded at the space station.

“I want to make it very clear that Butch and Suni are not stranded in space," Stich said. "Our plan is to continue to return them on Starliner and return them home at the right time. We have a little bit more work to do to get there for the final return, but they're safe on (the) space station." [Bold added: SiG]

Both NASA and Boeing wanted to emphasize that they're are not even talking about using anything other than the immediately available vehicles. In addition to Starliner, SpaceX's Crew Dragon and Russia's Soyuz are docked to the ISS. 

"Obviously, we have the luxury of having multiple vehicles, and we work contingency plans for lots of different cases, but right now, we’re really focused on returning Butch and Suni on Starliner," Stich said.

"We're not stuck on the ISS," said Mark Nappi, Boeing's vice president in charge of the Starliner program. "It's pretty painful to read the things that are out there. We've gotten a really good test flight that's been accomplished so far, and it's being viewed rather negatively.”

Stich said NASA officials should have "more frequent interaction" with reporters to fill in gaps of information on the Starliner test flight. NASA's written updates are not always timely, and often lack details and context.

They said NASA has already cleared Starliner for an emergency return to Earth if astronauts need to evacuate the space station for safety - as almost happened when that Russian satellite exploded last Wednesday (6/26) - or for medical reasons. But NASA hasn't yet approved Starliner for reentry and landing under "nominal" conditions.

 As you might imagine, a large part of the concern is the thruster issue. The purpose of the the next few weeks delay is to give engineers time to test a Starliner thruster on the ground. During the approach to dock at the ISS, Starliner's control software said five of Starliner's 28 reaction control system thrusters were unusable. Several days later, during a test while docked, four of those five were cleared for use, but there's a really big "but" hanging there. They can't be certain the thrusters fired at full thrust because of limitations while docked at the space station. 

So engineers will take an identical thruster on the ground and test-fire it at a NASA facility in New Mexico. The test will simulate the exact sequence of firings Starliner's thrusters performed as it approached the space station and the firing sequence engineers expect when Starliner undocks and returns to Earth.

The test will take a couple of weeks, then engineers will inspect the thruster. "The test will help us understand the thruster performance," Stich said. "It may give us 100 percent confidence that everything we’ve seen on orbit is fine. It’s just one more piece of data that we can have before we actually de-orbit the vehicle.”

At the end of the mission, Starliner's service module will detach before reentry and burn up, while the crew module parachutes to an airbag-cushioned landing, likely at White Sands, New Mexico. Officials are eager to gather as much data on thruster performance as possible in flight because they won't have an opportunity to inspect the service module after landing.

Then there's the matter I had forgotten about, that the second unmanned flight test in May of '22 also had thruster issues, and they thought software fixes would take care of the problems. Either they totally misunderstood what was really happening and did an incorrect fix or this is a new and different problem. It argues for these tests they're planning to do. There really is no good way to test some aspects of hardware behavior on orbit other than testing it on orbit.

Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams at the docking port entry to the ISS. Image credit: NASA

Looks Like A Bad Week to Hang Around Chinese Launch Sites

A Chinese commercial launch provider called Space Pioneer had an accident unlike any I've heard of. A rocket undergoing a static firing on a test stand broke free and launched itself before crashing to the ground near the test facility in Gongyi country, Henan province, on Sunday, June 30 local time. A video from the Telegraph, the UK News service, captures it with English text on screen.  

Space Pioneer was conducting its test as a buildup to an orbital launch of the Tianlong-3, which is benchmarked against the SpaceX Falcon 9, in the coming months. The company announced earlier this month that it has secured $207 million in new funding.

Shanghai-based digital newspaper The Paper reported Henan officials as saying there were no casualties reported. 

Space Pioneer issued its own statement later saying there was a structural failure at the connection between the rocket body and the test bench. They add that once the flight control software realized the vehicle was airborne, it shut off the engines, but that's not apparent watching the video. It seems to fly with a full flame tail for 15 seconds before the appearance of the flames appear to change, a long time under the circumstances. There looks to be a full 25 seconds before it loses enough velocity to start falling back to Earth. 

No casualties? Or no pieces big enough to recognize as once having been people?

It has been a bad few days to be around China's launch facilities. Eight days before, June 22, this crash of a hypergolic propellant vehicle apparently unfolded. (That's a YouTube "short" video and they don't import into this editor well) China 'N Asia Spaceflight has a smaller version on X.

A Long March 2C rocket lifted off from Xichang Satellite Launch Center at 3:00 a.m. Eastern (0700 UTC) June 22, sending the Space Variable Objects Monitor (SVOM) mission satellite into orbit. 

The launch was declared successful by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) a short time after liftoff. 
...

A video posted on Chinese social media site Sina Weibo appears to show a rocket booster falling on a populated area with people running for cover.

The booster fell to Earth near Guiding County, Qiandongnan Prefecture in Guizhou province, according to another post. An airspace closure notice for the mission established a temporary danger area containing Guiding County, Guizhou.

SpaceNews goes on to report that comments to the video included some saying it was due to "a failed recovery of SpaceX’s Starship" while others said it was an American conspiracy. Get a clue, commenters, Starship flies on methalox - methane and oxygen. Those don't look like that video. 

The Long March 2C uses a toxic, hypergolic (explodes on contact) mix of nitrogen tetroxide and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH). The reddish-orange gas or smoke from the booster could be indicative of nitrogen tetroxide, while a yellowish color could be caused by hydrazine fuel mixing with air. The trail of the rocket in that short video looks far more like nitrogen tetroxide than the Starship's fuel.

My "Little Ham Radio Backstory" Conclusion

When I started that piece, two weeks ago today, I had a simple conclusion I was going toward, but I kept wondering how many people understood the language we speak in the corner of the ham radio I world I'm talking about. Not just a word or two, like paper chaser, or grid square, but enough to follow what I'm saying. 

Here's where I'm going.

A few months ago we had propagation or band openings that I honestly didn't expect. In much of March and April, I'd get guys in South America: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, and Paraguay for example, stronger than locals - very high signal to noise ratios - and all of them (including the very strong local guy) off the back of my beam. That means in principle, they'd be 25 dB stronger if I was pointing the antenna toward them, which would turn their 25 to 30 dB SNR to 50 to 55 dB (except the software can't measure that high an SNR). 

Even better, those openings lasted a good long time. I'd hear those south American station for maybe an hour. One of my best catches in the period was a guy on the Falkland Islands off the SE tip of South America. I spent the better part of a half hour calling him to get a contact before he answered, and he was easy to copy for an hour.

March through April aren't considered months that have very good propagation so this was outstanding. The sporadic E (Es) propagation we expect to liven things up typically picks up as April turns to May and then Es is very good by the start of June and through July. 

There's a website and utility called PSKReporter that I can use to show everything my station heard within some time period, from 15 minutes up to 24 hours. I made a comparison plot to show a friend two days, April 29 and May 1st. Each and every red drop (think upside down drop) is a different station. These plots were made around 8 or 9AM and represent a few hours out of the previous day; the purpose was to show the day to day variation of what was phenomenal coverage.

If you study the two you see interesting things like Monday had the Caribbean from Haiti through the Lesser Antilles, but Wednesday had none of that bunch. Conversely, Wednesday had western US states including Colorado, possibly Nebraska and over to Arizona and California, as well as several heard in Mexico and Guatemala while Monday didn't. So while they don't match exactly, they're similar in an overall sense. They don't match but they rhyme.

Considering I only expected things to get better, that's pretty mind-boggling. Only it didn't get better - it took a nose dive.

I use a different website to tell me what everyone else is hearing, a site in Spain called DXMaps. A plot from June 2nd can help me explain. 

What I want to draw your attention to is that mess of red lines in the NE US. Someone came up with the term "Red blob" and it's pretty descriptive. Every one of the little boxes with call signs represent people reporting hearing or contacting the other end of the red line (and some of the red lines don't have those boxes, but you need to look really zoomed in to see that). In that blob area, the red report lines are so dense you can't even see the map underneath the lines. But notice that the lines don't cross into Florida, except for one guy reporting (or being reported by) a few stations in Texas.

For virtually all of June and the last week or two of May, I'd see a display like this on DXMaps and hear nothing in the blob or even from the overall direction of the blob. The vast majority of the time I'd hear or copy nothing except for one or two guys in peninsular Florida. Maybe within 50 to 100 miles, but rarely beyond the state line with Georgia or Alabama

Another thing that happens is that I'll finally copy someone from up in the blob area, or at least well beyond Florida and I'll copy one or two of their 15 second transmissions, meaning the opening was around 45 seconds long. With the FT8 mode, each side sends two 15 second transmissions and they're an exchange of information. That means the shortest possible contact is 60 seconds - once you both know you're there, so it's really closer to needing 90 seconds of opening than 60. More is always better.

Earlier this week, I had the station on earlier than usual (before noon) and I noticed the red contact traces were extending into Florida. I took that as a clue that maybe it would be better in the morning than the afternoon, and so far that has worked. In March and April, the band didn't really get open until 3PM or later, my time. For a while that seemed to be moving later in the day, now it seems to be moving earlier.

Putting all this together, this is supposed to be the best time of the year and it's the worst best time I can remember. It's the peak of the solar cycle, and while it's not a particularly good cycle, it's better than the last one. Most people think the peak of the solar cycle should be good for propagation, but that isn't the case for this year. I don't know what to expect going forward. 

"SpaceX will destroy the ISS"

To me, this is probably the Most Annoying Clickbaits on YouTube. Not because it's this one video with one guy pushing it, but a few posters keep posting things like this on how SpaceX is Going to Destroy the International Space Station.

I haven't bothered to look at any of those to see if they get the story right because any click is a reward for posting crap like that. The story is much simpler. Like it or not, the Space Station is showing signs of old age (like that Russian module leaking). NASA has projected it won't last beyond 2030. That means like it or not, the ISS is coming down one way or another. NASA looked at the options and went with a very reasonable option. Contract for what they're calling the US Deorbit Vehicle, and pick a winning bidder with what they judge to have the best chance of safely bringing the station back to Earth, presumably in a very remote part of some ocean.

NASA awarded the contract to SpaceX this week; $843 million to design and build the USDV.  

This spacecraft will dock to the International Space Station in 2029 and ensure the station makes a controlled reentry through Earth's atmosphere before reentering in 2030. The bids were submitted last year and the contract just announced on June 26. 

"Selecting a US Deorbit Vehicle for the International Space Station will help NASA and its international partners ensure a safe and responsible transition in low Earth orbit at the end of station operations," said Ken Bowersox, NASA's associate administrator for Space Operations, in a statement. "This decision also supports NASA’s plans for future commercial destinations and allows for the continued use of space near Earth."

NASA has been working to help initiate a commercial economy in low Earth orbit and has been supporting the few companies working to establish private space stations - presumably with contracts. The concept is that they would contract with these companies to accommodate NASA astronauts as well as astronauts from other countries and space tourists. The goal is to have these private stations operational by 2030 when the ISS will be decommissioned. Having a deadline for ISS availability is expected to help investors decide if they want to invest in these companies.

So how does one decommission the ISS, a behemoth approximately the size of an American football field, with a mass of nearly 1 million pounds (450 metric tons)?

The space agency considered alternatives to splashing the station down into a remote area of an ocean. One option involved moving the station into a stable parking orbit at 40,000 km above Earth, above geostationary orbit. However, the agency said this would require 3,900 m/s of delta-V, compared to the approximately 47 m/s of delta-V needed to deorbit the station. In terms of propellant, NASA estimated moving to a higher orbit would require 900 metric tons, or the equivalent of 150 to 250 cargo supply vehicles.

NASA also considered partially disassembling the station before its reentry but found this would be much more complex and risky than a controlled deorbit that kept the complex intact.

(No mention of considering crashing the station in a place where a million pounds of trash wouldn't be out of place, like San Fransicko or Lost Angeles.)

We don't know what SpaceX proposed but we can make some guesses. Since this is a mission that requires the DV to fire when it needs to for how long it needs to apply thrust, no more or no less, it needs to be what they call a "Category 3" rocket; that is, rockets that have a robust launch history. This immediately implies a Falcon 9. A Falcon 9 is a launch vehicle, though, not something with a robust history of operating in space. That implies something based on the Dragon space craft - probably Cargo Dragon rather than Crew - both of which are developing a good track record of mission success. 

Another option is the "Dragon XL" spacecraft, which SpaceX is designing to supply NASA's Lunar Gateway station near the Moon. This vehicle could conceivably have the propulsive capability to deorbit the station, and, critically, it is being designed to have the capability to remain docked to a space station for 12 months or longer, similar to the requirement for the deorbit vehicle. Therefore, this seems like the most probable choice.

An interesting footnote to this discussion is that NASA originally offered the bidding in two phases: the design phase was "Cost-plus" and the development phase was firm fixed-price. SpaceX chose to do the entire contract as firm fixed-price, and while NASA and Bill Nelson were discussing it as a $1.5 billion job, SpaceX bid that $834 million, saving 44% of what they estimated. 

Image credit: NASA

ULA to Launch Vulcan Cert-2 Flight with no Payload

I have to admit I was a bit surprised to read that United Launch Alliance (ULA) is going to launch the second flight of their Vulcan launch vehicle without a payload in an attempt to complete their certification mission requirements for the US Space Force. 

The second flight of Vulcan, the Cert-2 mission, had been reserved for Sierra Space's Dream Chaser spacecraft for the last five years, and in light of what appeared to be Dream Chaser's successful test campaign this winter and spring at NASA's Neil Armstrong Test Facility in Sandusky, Ohio, I had been expecting Dream Chaser to be ready for an early fall launch. 

There's still a lot of work for Sierra Space to do to prepare the Dream Chaser spaceplane for launch. Sierra Space's chief executive, Tom Vice, recently told ULA that the Dream Chaser spaceplane will not be ready to fly by September, when ULA will have the next Vulcan rocket ready to go.

Tory Bruno, ULA's CEO, announced the change in flight plan for the second Vulcan rocket in a conference call with reporters.

“Timing is everything," Bruno said. "We waited as long as possible on Dream Chaser because we really, really wanted to fly them. It’s a very exciting mission.”

Instead, this is going to be a “Certification at our own expense” for ULA. Since no other payloads farther down the schedule are ready, the mission will carry a "dummy satellite" more commonly called dead weight. Ironically, that load was originally developed for the Cert-1 mission out of concern that its main payload, Astrobotic's Peregrine lunar lander, wouldn't be ready; the same situation going on here.

For the Cert-2 flight, Vulcan will fly in the same configuration as the successful Cert-1 mission, with two strap-on solid rocket boosters alongside Vulcan's two BE-4 engines from Blue Origin. Vulcan's upper stage, the Centaur V will then carry the load the rest of the way to Low Earth Orbit. 

"We'll do some maneuvers with the upper stage just to fully characterize the limits of what Centaur V can do," Bruno said. Future Vulcan missions will require the Centaur V upper stage to fly in space for six or more hours to place national security payloads directly into geosynchronous orbit more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator.

The Centaur V is based on the Centaur upper stage that flies on ULA's soon-to-be-retired Atlas V rocket, but it has larger propellant tanks and a second engine. ULA engineers will use the Centaur V demonstrations on the Cert-2 mission to measure how much super-cold liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants boil off in space. Ultimately, this data will help ULA determine Centaur V's endurance in orbit.

In essence, this is a learning exercise for ULA at their expense instead of one paid for by the customer's payload. From their standpoint, Space Force simply needs to see that ULA can repeat the success of the first Vulcan launch. Once Certification is granted, they could conceivably put a military payload on the third Vulcan flight before the end of the year. 

The Space Force is eager for Vulcan to become available for a backlog of 25 military launches it awarded to ULA beginning in 2020, when the first Vulcan flight was scheduled to happen in 2021. Instead, Vulcan didn't fly until this year, and there is urgency for ULA to complete the second Vulcan certification flight, known as Cert-2, as soon as possible.

Vulcan Centaur's Cert-1 flight lifts off on January 8, 2024 from SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Image credit: United Launch Alliance. 

At the end of the conference, Bruno gave a small update on their plans to reuse the BE-4 engines from each Vulcan flight. 

ULA is taking a dual-pronged approach with the engine reuse program. One line of work involves designing the detachable aft end of the Vulcan booster, which will separate from the rest of the rocket, reenter the atmosphere, and deploy a parachute for capture in mid-air. Bruno said the architecture for the separating engine pod recently passed a preliminary design review, a relatively early stage of development. For context, ULA completed the preliminary design review for the basic version of the Vulcan rocket in 2016, nearly eight years before it finally launched.
...
The other effort related to engine reuse is the development of an inflatable heat shield, with the help of NASA, to protect the Vulcan booster engines during reentry back into the atmosphere. ULA and NASA tested a half-scale model of the inflatable heat shield on a reentry in 2022 and are now working on a larger version.

Bruno added, "I know it’s not quite as photogenic as a propulsive first stage that flies back and lands," as SpaceX does and Blue Origin still plans to do with New Glenn.

 

 

China's Chang'e-6 Returns Lunar Far Side Samples

China's Chang'e-6 capsule that landed on the far side of the moon after its May 3 launch returned its samples to Earth yesterday, completing its 53 day mission.  

The roughly 300-kilogram Chang’e-6 reentry capsule separated from the mission service module 5,000 kilometers away from Earth. The capsule then skipped off the atmosphere over the Atlantic Ocean at 1:41 a.m. Eastern (0541 UTC) June 25 to decelerate, before making a final descent.

The reentry capsule—containing around 2 kilograms of lunar material drilled and scooped from Apollo crater on the far side of the moon—landed in the grasslands of Siziwang Banner, Inner Mongolia at around 2:07 a.m. Teams recovered the capsule shortly after.

China is justly proud that this is the first mission in human history to return samples from the far side, and from a practical standpoint, it required too much infrastructure to have been done back in the '60s - it was too different from the single goal of Apollo. It was a five spacecraft effort. 

The mission was supported by the Queqiao-2 lunar relay satellite launched in March. Chang’e-6 then launched on a Long March 5 rocket from Wenchang spaceport May 3. The four-spacecraft stack entered lunar orbit just under five days later. 

Its lander-ascent vehicle combination landed at 41.6385°S, 206.0148°E in Apollo crater within the vast and scientifically intriguing South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin June 1. 

Long Xiao, a Planetary geoscientist for China University of Geosciences in Wuhan said in an interview after the landing, “I am excited about the future research scientists will conduct on these samples, which will provide valuable insights for addressing many significant lunar science questions. This is a major event for scientists worldwide.” 

“The Moon’s geological features are highly uneven. The far side of the moon differs significantly from the near side,” says Long. “The far side, affected by the South Pole-Aitken basin impact and lacking extensive maria regions, suggests that its geological evolution process is different from that of the near side.” 

The South Pole-Aitken (or SPA) basin is a gigantic impact crater, one of the largest and oldest impact features in the solar system. The impact which caused the basin is thought to have excavated material from the moon’s interior. 

A topographic view of the SPA. From SciTech Daily 2018 

China has already planned several additional lunar missions, including Chang’e-7 in 2026, and the more serious sounding Chang’e-8 in-situ resource utilization and technology test mission around 2028. 

In addition, they plan a manned lunar landing by 2030 and what they're referring to as the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) after that. Super heavy-lift launches in the early 2030s will construct ILRS.