Russian Nauka Module on ISS is Leaking

Back in July of '21, the Russian space agency Roscosmos launched a module called the Nauka (translates as "science") Multipurpose Laboratory Module (MLM) to the International Space Station (ISS) to replace their previous module, the Pirs (Pier) module, which had been part of the ISS for 20 years.  Yesterday, at around 1PM Eastern (1700 UTC) personnel in the ISS mission control in Houston spotted toxic ammonia flakes, looking like snow flurries, on video downlinks.  A few hours later, acting on a report from Mission Control, NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli looked out of the large windows on the ISS and saw that it was snowing in space.

This is the third time in 10 months that Russian hardware docked to the ISS has started leaking from its cooling system. 

On December 14, 2022, as two cosmonauts were preparing to conduct a spacewalk outside the space station, the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft docked nearby began to leak uncontrollably from its external cooling loop.

The MS-22 Soyuz was the spacecraft that American Astronaut Frank Rubio and his two Russian shipmates were supposed to ride back to Earth in March and instead returned two weeks ago; explained in more detail in the first story here.  

Additionally, on February 11, 2023, the Progress MS-21 supply ship attached to the International Space Station lost pressure in its external cooling system. Once again, all of the coolant on board a Russian spacecraft leaked into space due to a rupture.

In both cases, Russian officials blamed both coolant system leaks on "an external impact," pointing toward a micrometeorite or small fragment of orbital debris as the cause.  Considering the size of the ISS and all the hardware that is and has been attached to it and that hasn't been hit by some sort of debris like that, the claim kind of causes a raised eyebrow.  It simply can't be ruled out as an odd coincidence.  Still, some NASA officials privately questioned whether both of these leaks really were caused by impacts in space rather than other technical defects in the hardware; there just wasn't any hard data to back that.   

Russia's Nauka module as seen from the ISS. I think this is a photo on file and those white puffy things are clouds well below the ISS, not ammonia "snowflakes."  Image credit: Roscosmos. 

The leak has been traced to an older radiator, launched on Space Shuttle mission STS-132 in 2010.  It was originally intended for use on another Russian module, called Rassvet.  A Roscosmos spacewalk in April 2023 transferred the then-functional backup radiator to Nauka.  

As of now, NASA has said the ISS crew was never in any danger from the leak, saying the leak has "no impacts to the crew or to space station operations," and that the primary radiator for Nauka continues to work normally.

Europe's Euclid Telescope Was "Disoriented"

... but it's feeling much better now.  Shortly after sending back its first images over the summer (middle story) Euclid lost the guide stars it uses both to find its targets and to track them.  The probe is now said to be ready to get to its full science mission attempting to identify dark matter and dark energy.  

Euclid launched to investigate these cosmological mysteries, sometimes collectively known as the dark universe, on July 1 and took a four-week journey to Lagrange point 2, a gravitationally stable point in the Earth-sun system. Although Euclid reached its destination safely, its operators noticed a problem after the spacecraft took its first incredible images of the cosmos: Euclid's Fine Guidance Sensor was having trouble finding its guiding stars, which Euclid uses for navigation and thus are crucial to enabling it to point at precise areas of the sky.

Here's where the source article goes off the rails in my understanding of these things.  It opens by saying, "The cause of this issue was cosmic rays  —  charged particles that the sun emits during periods of high solar activity" but that's not what cosmic rays are.  Cosmic rays come from deep space, well beyond the solar system.  Charged particles coming from sun are called the solar wind or can be part of a Coronal Mass Ejection or CME, a part of more energetic solar flares.  You've heard of X-Ray flares?  Those are particularly energetic flares and bathe the solar system in X-rays (usually over a small angle)  Flares and CMEs can be encountered almost anytime, but are more common when the sun is in the more active portion of its solar cycle, which it is now.  

Coincidence of coincidences, as it turns out, the month of July was the second most active month of this solar cycle (25) so far in two different but vitally important measures, sunspot count and the 10.7 cm solar flux.  

The article goes on to say:

The cosmic rays were impacting the Fine Guidance Sensor, creating signals that Euclid was incorrectly identifying as stars. In addition, stray light from the sun and solar X-rays were interfering with the spacecraft. As a result, artifacts caused by this interference occasionally outnumbered the real stars being spotted by Euclid, meaning the spacecraft couldn't resolve the star patterns it needed to navigate.   

A quick visit to the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center and a little editing results in this:

I can't get the two graphs to show the same little popup as the top (Sunspot Number) plot shows, but the bottom one says for July (red arrow), Monthly values: 177.53, Predicted values: 111.7, predicted range F10.7 94.6-130.3.

Space.com includes this image from the Fine Guidance Sensor which shows "strange loops and lassos" that fall into the category of "pretty, but not pretty useful."  

An image that resulted from Euclid's Fine Guidance Sensor intermittently losing its guide stars. Image credit: ESA.

As you're probably aware, SW problems like this aren't completely unexpected, but thankfully aren't as serious as the one that took out the Russian Luna 25 probe.  Engineers started working on fixes as soon as the problem became apparent and developed a software patch.  The patch was tested out on a model of Euclid on the ground and once verified was uploaded to the operational Euclid out at L2.  Euclid is now ready to restart its all-important performance verification phase, interrupted in August, leading to final testing. It's expected to take until late November to fully check out the telescope and certify it for use.

First Day of Fall

I consider this our first day of fall here in the Silicon Swamp.  A front came through late yesterday and while our overnight low wasn't affected much, it was 71, today's high was 80.  Both of those are the "official NOAA/NWS" numbers from the station at the airport.  Neither number is a large departure from the temperatures before the wind shift that signaled the cool front, or NOAA's "normal" values, and the biggest factor in it feeling pleasant outside was that it stayed cloudy all day, the kind of day when you don't cast a shadow standing outside.

Last Sunday, I mentioned some problems I was having with the UPS backing up the two computers and monitors on this desk.  Long story short, I pulled the battery pack out of it, a pair of sealed lead-acid batteries making a 12 cell, over 26V pack, and did a controlled discharge test on it with my CBA-IV.  It behaved rather normally and I found a record of having replaced the battery pack in the UPS back in '20, so I decided to replace the entire UPS instead of just the battery.  All of that was accomplished by Thursday and I've kept the two batteries to add for my emergency power needs.  They're set up to be cycled a couple of times; discharged and recharged.

Tonight I'm monitoring the European Space Agency Flight VV23 launch as I did a couple of nights ago.  The launch is scheduled for 9:36 PM Eastern, 0236 UTC, from French Guiana. 

After that, at 10:56 PM Eastern, 0356 UTC, SpaceX has scheduled a launch of Starlink satellites called group 6-22 from Cape Canaveral SFS SLC-40.  And if we feel like sitting up (or setting an alarm), another batch of Starlink satellites is set to launch at 3:43 AM Eastern, 0743 UTC, this is group 7-4, from Vandenberg SFB SLC-4 East (SLC-4E). 

And just because:

And here you see why I wanted a font to match the original of this.  It's that free font "Moon Flower" - not exact but close enough,

Northrup Grumman Drops Developing Private Space Station

On Tuesday, Oct. 3, Northrup Grumman and Voyager Space announced a change in their relationship.  There is a "space race" of sorts in private space stations, which NASA has said they want to see privatized.  Both Northrup Grumman and Voyager Space have been working on the major effort; developing a space station and getting it into orbit. 

Voyager has been working on a concept called Starlab which appears to be a much smaller station than the ISS, and to accentuate the difference even more, will rotate to simulate something like gravity - as seen in every space station movie ever.  

Screen capture from Voyager Space's Starlab webpage.

Northrup Grumman has been working on their own design, which appears to be quite a bit larger, at least from comparing these computer-generated renderings. 

Northrop Grumman said it made more sense for them to drop plans for their own commercial space station (above) and partner with Voyager Space on Starlab. Image credit: Northrop Grumman 

The two companies announced a partnership Oct. 3 where Northrop Grumman will develop a version of its Cygnus spacecraft capable of docking autonomously to Voyager’s Starlab space station, along with other potential future contributions. Northrop will also end development of its own proposed commercial station.

In a joint interview, Steve Krein, vice president of civil and commercial space at Northrop Grumman, and Dylan Taylor, chief executive of Voyager Space, said the partnership emerged from discussions the two companies had about using Northrop's Cygnus vehicles to provide cargo transportation to Starlab. 

Both executives, Krein from Northrop and Taylor from Voyager, were enthusiastic about joining together - as you'd expect at this point.  Taylor praised Northrop saying, "they are, in my opinion, the best hardware manufacturer in aerospace and defense."  Krein countered by saying that while Northrop had made a significant amount of progress and understood the business case, “there was just a stronger case to be made for a combination of the talents, expertise and subject matter experts with ourselves, Voyager and their partners.” 

I find it an interesting combination: old space and new space.  Northrop Grumman's Cygnus cargo ships (that just went obsolete) have been delivering cargo to the ISS since the start of the commercial contracts that NASA created and the company has a long history.  Northrop and Grumman date back to the 1930s and have developed many aircraft you'd instantly recognize (or think of on your own!).  

Voyager apparently hasn't actually put anything in space; they talk about the Bishop Airlock on the ISS in 2020 as theirs but it seems that was built by Nanoracks and Voyager merged with or bought them.  

Northrop retains the right to sell Cygnus services to everybody, and Voyager will pay them to develop an autonomous docking ability for the Cygnus.  The two companies are looking into ways to get the most out of the collaboration.  

While the partnership means that one fewer company is now pursuing a station to succeed the ISS, NASA saw the arrangement as a positive development. “Refining strategies and evolving partnerships are part of the process as we build a robust low Earth orbit economy where NASA is one of many customers,” said Angela Hart, manager of NASA’s commercial LEO development program, in an agency statement Oct. 3.

With Blue Origin and Sierra Space moving toward dropping their joint agreement to work on the Orbital Reef space station together, there's more than a little "refining strategies and evolving partnerships" going on!

I Don't Have Much

I really don't see much in space news worth talking about that we haven't already done lots on, and then I got busied with things around the house that sucked up more time than expected.  

ULA's launch of the first two test satellites for Amazon's Kuiper constellation this afternoon (2:06 PM EDT) was successful.  

At the moment, I'm listening to the Arianespace preparation for the launch of THEOS-2, and the FORMOSAT-7R/TRITON:satellites aboard the original Vega booster, not the Vega C update. 

THEOS-2 is a high-resolution Earth observation optical satellite, part of the next-generation national geo-information system provided by Airbus Defence and Space to support the Kingdom of Thailand’s key development priorities. Delivering 0.5-meter ground resolution imagery, this end to end system will complement THEOS-1, launched in 2008 for Thailand, one of the few nations in the world able to fully exploit geo-information for societal benefits.

FORMOSAT-7R/TRITON, developed by the Taiwanese Space Agency (TASA), is equipped with the Global Navigation Satellite System-Reflectometry (GNSS-R), which collects signals that bounce off the sea surface. It helps scientists calculate the wind field over the oceans. This data will be shared with the global meteorology community, contributing to the forecast of typhoon intensity and trajectory.

In addition to these three major satellites, the mission is bringing ten additional smaller satellites, detailed here in the description block below the video. Click the "...more" at the bottom of the small window.  

The mission aborted between T-60 seconds and liftoff.  I can't give an exact count because there wasn't a countdown clock on screen and no specific reason for the abort was given.  

Screen capture from the video live stream.

Small Space News Story Roundup 21

Just a couple of smallish stories, as nothing big seems to be going on. 

Rocket Lab opens facility bought from Virgin Orbit

Remember when Virgin Orbit had their out-of-business, closeout sale back in the May/June timeframe?  There's a photo I included in a post as the closeout sale was ending that showed Virgin Orbit's main production facility.  While the products and parts in that photo were bought by Firefly Aerospace, the building itself was bought by Rocket Lab.  Today, SpaceNews reports that Rocket Lab opens this facility as an engine development center. Compare the photo in that first link to this one and with the exception of it being taken from 90 degrees to the left of the older photo, there's at least a few instantly recognizable things between the two pictures.

They state that this building will be used to produce the Rutherford and Archimedes engines used on the Electron booster.  Image credit: Rocket Lab/Austin Adams

Rocket Lab acquired the lease on the building, along with the machinery and equipment inside, for $16.1 million in a bankruptcy auction in May.  

Rocket Lab previously estimated the value of the facility and its contents at about $100 million. However, Adam Spice, Rocket Lab’s chief financial officer, said in an interview that the biggest impact of the purchase is “de-risking” the schedule for scaling up engine production.

“Things that we were thinking we could probably get done in 12 to 18 months, well, it’s done. So really it was more of a timeline and uncertainty shrinker, if you will,” he said. “Getting stuff for 16 cents on the dollar didn’t hurt as well.”

An interesting, "I had no idea" side story here is that the City of Long Beach, CA, south of  El Lay, has made a concerted effort in recent years to attract space companies to the city, including Rocket Lab as well as Relativity Space, SpinLaunch and Vast, under an initiative called “Space Beach”.  Rex Richardson, mayor of Long Beach, thanked Rocket Lab for taking over the facility and working with the city on job fairs for former Virgin Orbit employees. “What that means is that this burgeoning space cluster we have in Long Beach is resilient,” he said.

Will the next Starship test flight be in October?

The FAA and SpaceX are apparently in agreement that SpaceX has met the 57 corrective actions that were required before a launch could happen, but that's not the holdup.  According to Reuters, quoting acting FAA Administrator Polly Trottenberg, this launch requires a blessing from the Fish and Wildlife Service.  From the FAA's standpoint, Trottenberg says a launch this month might be possible but she didn't or couldn't speak for the FWS.  

The problem is that the FWS and the FAA are getting into conflict with NASA.  Starship has been tasked by NASA to land the Artemis 3 crew on the moon in 2025 or 2026, a critical part of NASA's mission.

Delays in getting Starship ready in recent months caused NASA officials to say multiple times that they are keeping an eye on SpaceX's progress. Jim Free, the agency's associate administrator of the exploration systems development mission directorate, said in early August there is still time for SpaceX to meet NASA's Artemis 3 guidelines. But if not, he said, the agency is prepared to fly a non-landing mission for Artemis 3 and to delay the lunar touchdown to at least Artemis 4.

For his part, Elon Musk said that he thinks the chances of success in the second flight are pretty good if it doesn't blow up.  No, seriously.  

“If the engines light and the ship doesn't blow itself up … I think we've got a decent chance of reaching orbit.”

Musk said that in a keynote address on Thursday (Oct. 5) at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Baku, Azerbaijan.  He added that SpaceX does not want to "set expectations too high."

Isn't that like saying, "if it doesn't fail spectacularly, it just might work?"

Intuitive Machines Ready for their Lunar Lander Launch

Intuitive Machines says that their IM-1 lander is set to deliver to the Kennedy Space Center and SpaceX for the probe's ride to the moon, scheduled for No Earlier Than November 16.  If successful, this will be the first privately-developed vehicle to land on the moon.  So far, the complete roster of entities that have landed on the moon are the US, the former Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China and now India; all of those were missions by the respective governments, not private companies. 

The company unveiled its completed Nova-C lander at its new headquarters here Oct. 3, a day after completing a pre-ship review that confirmed that the spacecraft is ready to be transported to the Kennedy Space Center for launch on a Falcon 9 on a mission designated IM-1.

That launch is scheduled for a six-day period that opens Nov. 16 from KSC’s Launch Complex 39A. The lander will separate from the upper stage 32 minutes after launch and begin a five-day journey to the moon. A day after going into orbit around the moon, the spacecraft will attempt a landing at Malapert Crater, about 300 kilometers from the lunar south pole.

“We’re ready to go,” Tim Crain, chief technology officer of Intuitive Machines, said in an interview. Engineers completed all testing of the vehicle’s hardware and software ahead of shipment with no remaining issues to deal with before launch. “We’re really pleased about where we are.”

Intuitive Machines says they're concerned about pad congestion at pad 39A.  There are two launches ahead of IM-1 at 39A, including the Falcon Heavy launch of Psyche that was recently delayed a week to Oct. 12.  IM-1 has to launch from LC-39A because it's the only pad configured to fuel the lander with methane and liquid oxygen propellants shortly before liftoff.  Still, the window for Psyche closes on October 20 and that's almost four weeks before the window to launch IM-1 opens; given SpaceX launched 10 Falcon 9 missions last month, averaging one every three days, it doesn't seem like there's much to worry about. While I understand it shouldn't be taken as perfect, I looked at the SpaceX manifest on NextSpaceflight.com and see only one other mission for Pad 39A other than Psyche, an ISS Cargo Resupply mission, CRS SpX-29 on November 1st.

IM-1 is the company’s first lander mission and the first that is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, where the agency buys payload space on commercial landers. IM-1 is carrying five NASA payloads as well as six commercial payloads from customers ranging from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University to artist Jeff Koons.

Historically, and this is going back to the earliest days of spaceflight, fewer than 45% of lunar landing missions have been successful.  Steve Altemus, chief executive of Intuitive Machines, estimated the odds of success at “upwards of 65% to 75%,” well over the historic averages.  To me, that makes sense; surely we've learned things in the last 60 years that can enhance the chances compared to that 45%.  That said, it's true that Israel's private company SpaceIL lost their Beresheet during its landing attempt in 2019, just as Japan's company ispace lost their Hakuto-R this past April.  Intuitive Machines has access to the failure analysis of these missions, and has learned what to design for.  

The Nova-C lander built by Intuitive Machines is posed for a photograph before it's to be shipped to the Kennedy Space Center.  Credit: SpaceNews/Jeff Foust

Intuitive Machines comes across as being well-placed for this mission and beyond.  They openly acknowledge the chance of failure, it would be more of a concern if they didn't acknowledge it, saying they have preparations for an IM-2 lander if need be.

The company has three NASA CLPS awards for lunar lander missions but has also moved into other business areas. The company teamed with KBR to win a NASA engineering services contract called Omnibus Multidiscipline Engineering Services (OMES) III earlier this year that has a maximum value of $719 million over five years. Intuitive Machines also was one of three companies that won recent Air Force Research Lab contracts to work on designs of nuclear-powered spacecraft.

“Look at Intuitive Machines as a diversified space exploration company,” Altemus said, with several lines of business. In addition to its recent awards, the company is bidding on a NASA contract to provide communications services for its Near Space Network, supporting lunar missions, as well as NASA’s Lunar Terrain Vehicle lunar rover for future Artemis crewed missions.

The link to the Air Force Research Lab article opens with a photo that looks very much like the nuclear reactor called KRUSTY that I wrote about five years ago.  It's very cool to see a contract being let for these nuclear reactors; like I said at the time, if these things delivered 20 kW, I'd have to start looking into how I could finance one for my backyard. 

Japan Looking at Developing Reusable Booster

Let me lead with my chin on this story and before I say anything else, I'll tell you what bothers me about it. 

First, there's no obvious news story that it's based on.  The article quotes Japan’s basic plan on space policy, which was revised June 13 this year, but that link is to a Japanese language site which I can't use since I don't read or speak the language.  The site has a button at the top right that says "ENGLISH" which led to some dead end searches.  As close as I can get to a Space Policy link doesn't turn up anything that seems to be related.  There's no June 13th update on the site; it jumps from February 21 to August 8.

Second, it's datelined as coming from Baku, Azerbaijan.  As far as I know JAXA does nothing, space-related or not, in Azerbaijan.  I don't see anything in the story related to that location.  It may simply be where the reporter filing the story is based.  The article says the author, Andrew Jones, covers China's space industry for SpaceNews - but I don't think China does anything space-related there, either.

That said, the story refers to things we know and see about Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and doesn't seem far-fetched.  To begin with, the new launcher will be designed jointly by JAXA and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI). It's being designed to be reusable while also increasing payload capability and decreasing launch cost.

MHI is deeply entwined in the Japanese space program.  They've worked on a couple of vehicles that I've covered here, at least the H3 and H-2A and probably more.  The new rocket is to be a follow on to the H3. 

H3 is an expendable rocket intended to be a more capable and cost-effective successor to the H-2A rocket. It had its first flight in March, but a second stage issue resulted in loss of the mission. Both rockets are powered by liquid hydrogen-liquid oxygen propellant mix. 

The fuel for the reusable rocket hasn't been decided, but the team is looking at methane/oxygen or methalox, like SpaceX's Starship/SuperHeavy, ULA's Vulcan, Blue Origin's New Glenn and China's Zhuque-2 rocket, to name a few. They're also looking at staying with hydrogen/LOX.

JAXA said it is targeting cutting cost per kilogram to low Earth orbit (LEO) in half compared to the H3. Reusability will also allow an increase in launch frequency.  

JAXA's launch of their current lunar mission back on Sept. 6, atop the MHI H-2A.  Screen capture.

And an "oh, by the way" addition, the SLIM lunar lander (also called the Moon Sniper) being launched in that picture is transferring from Earth to Lunar orbit and should be in high lunar orbit by Wednesday, Oct. 4. 

At the risk of sounding like I say this all the time because I do, I see this as more evidence of how the reusability of Falcon 9 is changing everything.  Any space agency or corporation not looking into reusability is running the risk of being the equivalent of a horse-drawn buggy in the Indianapolis 500. 

Europe's Vega C Is "Back to the Old Drawing Board"

In the words of Looney Tunes' Marvin the Martian. 

The European Space Agency's new, small payload booster, the Vega C has been on hold since its December 2022 launch failure that prompted continuing investigations into the second stage engine.  An anomaly that took place during a static-fire test of a Zefiro 40 motor June 28 led to another investigation which recently completed and the announcement today that parts of that engine need to be redesigned, forcing a next possible launch back to the end of calendar '24.  (NOTE: Zefiro is from the acronym ZEro FIrst stage ROcket.)

Giovanni Colangelo, ESA’s inspector general and chair of the committee that investigated the incident, said at a briefing that the performance of the motor was “more or less normal” until 39.7 seconds after ignition. At that point, a new throat insert made of carbon-carbon material was expelled from the nozzle, along with other pieces of the nozzle. The motor continued to burn, although at far lower pressures, until the fuel was exhausted.

Just between us, parts of an engine being expelled is never a good thing.  

This test (June's) was not intended to be a test of the engine itself, but of that carbon-carbon throat insert, which was implicated in the December failure.  The investigation of that failure showed that the carbon-carbon material from the original supplier, Ukrainian company Yuzhnoye, did not meet specifications. That led to ArianeGroup taking over production of the throat insert. At the time ESA hoped to resume Vega C flights by the end of 2023 and the June test was to verify their conclusions and that they were back on schedule to fly in the next few months.

The June test anomaly was not linked to that launch failure, ESA concluded. “The failure of the test is related to the design of the nozzle that was not upgraded with the change in the carbon-carbon supplier for the throat insert,” Colangelo said. The geometry of the new throat insert and its different thermo-mechanical properties contributed to the failure. “The effects had not been identified as critical during the redesign.”

He said that as early as one second into the test, debonding of the throat insert from the metallic nozzle had started, which grew progressively worse. Eventually, hot gas from the exhaust got into gaps in the nozzle, causing the ejection of the throat insert and other nozzle components.

ESA recommended that the Zefiro 40 nozzle be redesigned, along with improved modeling of its performance and two static-fire tests of that new design. A joint task force of [engine manufacturer] Avio and ESA personnel has already started that work, said Giulio Ranzo, chief executive of Avio. “We have to conduct, I would say, an adjustment of the design, a modification of the design of part of the nozzle.”

The Zefiro 40 engine. A static-fire test of the motor suffered an anomaly June 28. Credit: ESA/M, Pedoussaut

The redesign plan includes one static firing, in the second quarter of '24. Ranzo said that test will be used to both confirm the performance of the redesigned nozzle as well as the refined numerical models. That will be followed by a second static-fire test before Vega C is ready to return to flight. From the sound of it, I suspect that launch by the "fourth quarter of '24" is on the optimistic side. 

The Fake Heroes Meme Strikes Again

Having some minor but annoying technical difficulties here today; the UPS for these computers has intermittently given off some sort of warning buzzer.  The display appears to show an "X" through what looks to be a battery.  Battery dead?  Not charging?  Gone to find itself with a tribe of nymphomaniac leprechauns?  Don't know.  An additional puzzle is that it seemed to coincide with an oddity we've had with our dishwasher for a few weeks, where it changes the "normal" 1 hr 52 minute cycle to last closer to 2 hrs 50 minutes, but the dishwasher thing has happened many times and only this one time did it coincide with UPS yelling at us. 

The computer issue makes me want to do a repost of something that's just so pathetic it's a cliche': last night's "eleventh hour" signing of a way to avoid shutting down the government. It just comes across as brinkmanship - delaying the resolution of a short term fix to the last minute to look like heroes.  

The very last line in this cartoon from VirtualShackles.com (which I've used multiple times) sums it up perfectly.  Paraphrasing to fit the situation  "Just sit on the agreement a bit longer so we look like heroes."  (VirtualShackles.com appears to be gone.  I tried to go there years ago and tonight; all I get is a notice that the domain name is for sale.  Well, the cartoon is dated 2011, after all.)

Let's be honest about this.  The other way of saying "government shutdown" is "paid vacation" for the lucky Fed.gov 's nonessential workers.  The longest government shutdown ever was 35 days between December of '18 and January of '19, under President Trump.  True, the essential workers had to work without pay until the deal was made before their pay could be issued and that could have been tough.  The nonessential workers were free to get a replacement job to get some additional income but had to wait for the shutdown to be over to get their back pay, too.

The thing they passed apparently has money for Ukraine and just keeps all the crap flowing.  I just see this cartoon mentally whenever I hear about avoiding a government shutdown, debt ceiling or such stories.  

30 Days Has September

I guess everybody knows that childhood rhyme, but my point is simply that it's the end of September and while it's not fall, it's not August either.  Ann Barnhardt posted this:

My reaction was "same thing in Florida."  It's not 90 at the moment because it's about 20 minutes after sunset and it has been raining since around 2 PM.  On September 20th.  To be completely honest, the days' highs for the last week have only maxed out at about 87.  The "feels like" (heat index) temperature is more like 97, while a month ago, the highs would be in the low 90s with the heat index around 10 to 15 degrees higher.  For what it's worth, my reaction to the heat index is usually that when they tell me it's 87 with a feels like temperature of 97, I say it "feels like" 87 here.

Saying it has been raining since 2 PM on the 20th is a PFA number, but it has been raining daily for a couple of weeks.  Launches from Cape Canaveral have been delayed hours or overnight.  Last night's Falcon 9 launch was delayed from around 6:49 PM until 10 PM (video from NASA Spaceflight.com here at T-30 seconds) and previous launches have also been delayed.  

The Falcon Heavy launch of the mission to asteroid 16 Psyche has been slipped one week until Thursday, October 12 at 10:16 AM EDT.  The delay "...allows the NASA team to complete verification of the parameters used to control the Psyche spacecraft's nitrogen cold gas thrusters," they said in a blogs.nasa.gov posting.  The Atlas V launch of the first two Amazon Kuiper satellites has been set to Friday, October 6 at 2:00 PM EDT.  There are a few Falcon 9 missions scattered in the next two weeks as well.

The Psyche spacecraft issue is uncomfortable, considering the year long mission delay was specifically because of software issues like this. This launch window for the Psyche mission closes on October 25.  Slipping seven days out of a 20 day window seems like a lot. 

By the way; does anyone know what font that is in the graphic?  I opened the jpeg in MS Paint and went through lots of fonts without finding anything that matched it. 

3D Printed Solid Rocket Motors?

A startup named X-Bow Systems has received a $17.8 million contract from the US Air Force Research Laboratory to demonstrate additive manufacturing technologies for solid rocket propulsion. 

The three-year contract, announced Sept. 26, is part of a $60 million agreement announced in April known as a strategic funding increase, or STRATFI. X-Bow’s contract includes $30 million in U.S. Air Force funding and $30 million in matching funds from private investors. AFRL’s $17.8 million contract covers a portion of the government’s share of the agreement.  [$17.8 million out of $30 million is around 59% of it - SiG]

The AFRL has a program going called Rapid Energetics & Advanced Rocket Manufacturing (RE-ARM), intended to help reduce the cost and schedule to produce propellants for tactical rocket motors.

X-Bow CEO and founder Jason Hundley said the AFRL contract will help mature the company’s manufacturing technology and processes. The company has been working on solid rocket technology projects with AFRL at Edwards Air Force Base, California. 
...
A solid propellant production line that traditionally would take anywhere from three to six years to stand up, “we’re looking to do that within 12 months” and at much lower cost, Hundley said.

Hundley went on to say that they've designed their process to work with any size Solid Rocket Motor from “... from the 2-inch diameter level into the 60-inch plus diameter level.”  The company hopes to eventually compete for contracts against established solid rocket manufacturers like Northrop Grumman and Aerojet Rocketdyne, which was recently acquired by L3Harris. 

April 2023 test of an X-Bow Systems additively manufactured solid propellant.  The source article doesn't say how big that SRM is, but judging by the screws and other hardware visible on the test mount, it looks closer to 2" than 60".  Image credit: X-Bow Systems

This looks like a fun project for the home experimenter.  Print solid rocket motors out of some sort of liquid that hardens into the proper size and shape as it cures; perhaps print a ceramic nozzle on it.  I'm pretty sure I can't be the only one around here who played with model rockets, over 50 years ago in my case.  I'm thinking of the little solid-fuel rocket engines we used back then.  I'm sure these need to be higher performance, which means they need to be in metal tubes rather than cardboard. 

NASA Opens the OSIRIS-REx Sample Container

While not releasing much information, NASA Johnson Spaceflight Center in Texas said that on Tuesday, Sept. 26, they opened OSIRIS-REx's asteroid-sample canister for the first time in seven years, two days after the capsule containing it landed in the Utah desert.  

The NASA Astromaterials account on X tweeted:

“A scientific treasure box.”

Scientists gasped as the lid was lifted from the #OSIRISREx asteroid sample return canister, showing dark powder and sand-sized particles on the inside of the lid and base. 

Photo of the capsule inside the glove box/sterile container where it's currently contained.  The "dark powder" is visible facing the camera on the base in front of and all along the right side of the container where the cover closes.  Image credit: NASA, from the JSC's new facility for this mission.

NASA blogs: 

Johnson houses the world’s largest collection of astromaterials, and curation experts there will perform the intricate disassembly of the Touch and Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) to get down to the bulk sample within. These operations are happening in a new laboratory designed specifically for the OSIRIS-REx mission. The aluminum lid was removed inside a glovebox designed to enable working with the large piece of hardware.

When the TAGSAM is separated from the canister, it will be inserted in a sealed transfer container to preserve a nitrogen environment for up to about two hours. This container allows enough time for the team to insert the TAGSAM into another unique glovebox. Ultimately, this speeds up the disassembly process. There is a very high level of focus from the team — the sample will be revealed with an amazing amount of precision to accommodate delicate hardware removal so as not to come into contact with the sample inside.

Ultimately, researchers will be studying this sample for years, if not decades, and the portions not being analyzed will be kept in the dry nitrogen atmosphere.  NASA will unveil the Bennu sample to the public on Oct. 11 at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT), 17 days after the capsule returned, during a webcast event at NASA.gov/live.

Jeff Bezos Replaces Blue Origin CEO

Two years and two months ago (July of '21) my daily piece was to relay a story from Ars Technica's Eric Berger that I called "Is It Too Late for Jeff Bezos to Save Blue Origin?"  That piece was written the day after what was the company's peak moment; their first manned launch with Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark, octogenarian astronaut Wally Funk, and 18 year old Oliver Daemen. 

On Monday, the story broke that Bezos had fired the chief executive of Blue, Bob Smith and replaced him with a former vice president from Amazon, Dave Limp, who stepped down as Amazon's vice president of devices and services last month.  Writing for Ars Technica is Eric Berger who summed it up this way:

To put things politely, Smith has had a rocky tenure as Blue Origin's chief executive. After being personally vetted and hired by Bezos, Smith took over from Rob Meyerson in 2017. The Honeywell engineer was given a mandate to transform Blue Origin into a large and profitable space business.
....
As a space reporter, I have spoken with dozens of current and former Blue Origin employees, and virtually none of them have had anything positive to say about Smith's tenure as chief executive. I asked one current employee about the hiring of Limp on Monday afternoon, and their response was, "Anything is better than Bob."

The company has grown enormously, from 1500 people to nearly 11,000.  On the other hand, growing a company isn't terribly difficult, in the sense of adding warm bodies who may or may not know what they're doing.  The problem is that Smith has been significantly late on a number of key programs, including delivering the BE-4 rocket engines to United Launch Alliance.  Delivering them relies on making them manufacturable which Blue needs as well, for getting the New Glenn to fly routinely.  Adding people without adding income and building your product line just doesn't mean much.   

Smith received consistently low marks for his performance as chief executive of Blue Origin on Glassdoor.  I didn't remember until looking up that July '21 story as a starting point that just over two months after that first flight, a group of current and former Blue Origin employees wrote a blistering letter about the company under Smith.  The reason behind both of those may well be that Smith came from an old line engineering company, Honeywell, while Blue was selling itself as New Space.  It's true that they beat SpaceX to reflying rockets, but they haven't extended that past their "New Shepard" suborbital tourist flights.  As always, in any company that lives on innovation, the question is, "so what have you done for me lately?" 

As for the new Blue Origin CEO, Dave Limp, pardon me if I don't really see anything that indicates he'll be super.  Originally a computer scientist, he began his career at Apple in the mid-1980s directing the North and South American PowerBook division.  He worked in venture capital and was chief strategy officer of Palm before joining Amazon in 2010.  

At Amazon, Limp had a high-profile job overseeing the development of the company’s consumer electronic devices, including the Kindle, Fire TV, and Echo, as well as the Alexa voice assistant. Some of the shine on Limp's star seemingly wore off in recent years, as Alexa has been perceived to be a "colossal failure" by some accounts and, partly at least, led to Amazon shedding 10,000 jobs. 

The only thing approximating space experience that gets mentioned is that his consumer electronics division also oversaw the development of the Project Kuiper satellite constellation, designed to compete with Starlink.  ULA is about to launch the first two experimental Kuiper satellites next month on an Atlas V.  

He arrives at Blue Origin with a lot of work to do. The company has major programs, including the heavy-lift New Glenn rocket, the Blue Moon lunar lander, and the Orbital Reef space station in the development phase. He must balance these initiatives with the company's ongoing work to scale production of the BE-4 rocket engine as well as the New Shepard suborbital spacecraft.

After the first New Shepard tourist flight, Bob Smith (black ball cap and sweatshirt) walks alongside Jeff Bezos (blue flight suit and floppy white hat) near their flight range in Texas.  Joe Raedle/Getty Images 

Let's wish Blue Origin luck.

A Couple of Small Space Station Stories

Short (and short term) story first:

Wednesday morning at 3:54 AM ET, 0754 UTC, the crew that has been on the ISS for just over a year will leave the ISS in their Soyuz spacecraft bound for the steppes of Kazakhstan.  If all goes according to plan they'll land at 7:17 AM ET, 1117 UTC, roughly 3-1/2 hours later.

Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin of the Russian space agency Roscosmos along with NASA Astronaut Frank Rubio flew up to the ISS on September 21, 2022 for the typical six month crew rotation on the station.  Three months into their six month stay, on December 15th, their Soyuz spacecraft was found to be leaking and lost all of its coolant to space.  The capsule was deemed unsafe to fly and the three had to wait for a replacement Soyuz capsule that was prepared, launched, and arrived at the ISS on February 25, 2023.  Seven months ago.

So why are they leaving now?  The replacement crew also needed a Soyuz capsule and this one needed more more work before it would be available, earlier this month.  The replacement astronauts — NASA's Loral O'Hara and cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub — launched on Sept. 15 and arrived at the ISS that same day.

As of now, it appears that Frank Rubio will become the American astronaut with the longest mission in space. 

If they land on time on Wednesday, their mission will have lasted 371 days. Rubio, a spaceflight rookie, now holds the American record for the longest continuous spaceflight, besting the 355-day mark set by NASA's Mark Vande Hei. 

While the mission for the new crew is a bit complicated (details at the Space.com source article) Loral O'Hara expects to return to the ground in much less than a year.  Frank Rubio went up expecting he'd be done in six months. 

NASA Requests Proposals to Deorbit the ISS 

Originally referred to as a Space Tug, NASA has upped the name to the more elegant sounding U.S. Deorbit Vehicle (USDV) and has issued a "Contract Availability" request for industry input on vehicles to ensure a safe reentry and (presumably) splashdown of parts of the ISS into a remote area in an ocean when the ISS is decommissioned in 2030.   

USDV proposals are due on Nov. 17, and more details about the requirements are available on this U.S. government website. NASA is allowing vendors to suggest much of the design of the vehicle as well as the best payment type: firm fixed price, or cost plus incentive fee for each of the initial phases (design, development, test and evaluation) to be followed by firm fixed price.

"At the conclusion of the International Space Station program, the station will be deorbited in a controlled manner to avoid populated areas," NASA officials wrote in a blog post Sept. 20 announcing the request for proposals. A Russian Progress cargo vehicle, which is usually used to boost the ISS' orbit periodically, they added, would not be sufficient for the job. As such, "a new spacecraft solution would provide more robust capabilities for responsible deorbit."

NASA emphasized that the USDV would be responsible for deorbiting the U.S. segment, but did not provide details on how the other main international partners would remove their sections from orbit. "Partner contributions (are) based on mass percent ownership by agency," NASA officials said, framing the ISS deorbit as "a shared responsibility" among the partnership.

The ISS partners that will need to deorbit modules, in order from largest to smallest portions, are the Russian Roscosmos agency, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).  The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) is a partner but doesn't have a full module on the ISS - it has the robotic Canadarm2.  Roscosmos has recently changed their agreement to stay on the ISS until 2028; the others are committed to staying on until decommissioning in 2030.

NASA expects that the USDV will either be a completely new vehicle or a modification to an existing one.  They point out that this is going to be a single mission vehicle that must function on its first flight, with sufficient redundancy and ability to recover from problems to continue the critical deorbit burn.  They go on to add:

"As with any development effort of this size, the USDV will take years to develop, test and certify."

The thing that strikes me about this is that it seems the work would have to be starting in 2024 at best - the fiscal award couldn't be sooner than the 1st quarter of NASA's '24 fiscal year because that starts  Sunday and the proposal responses are due in November.  They want full development of a critical spacecraft in six years.  For comparison, the contract to start SLS was awarded in 2011, with its first flight taking 11 years, November of '22.  Almost twice the time available to get USDV qualified.  This should be a simpler problem, so am I comparing apples and oranges? 

ISS viewed from an approaching vehicle.  Image credit: NASA

Edited at 0900 ET on 9/27/23 to add:  Forgot to link to the source article on Space.com for the second story.  Link is now in the first sentence.  There are also some rare, good comments at the source on the question of why don't they preserve it by putting it in a higher orbit or on the moon or "someplace else" at the bottom of the article. 

That Other Sample Return Mission Isn't Looking that Good

On the heels of the samples successfully returned from Asteroid Bennu yesterday, it brought to mind a story that appeared earlier in the week about the plans to bring samples from Mars to Earth in a future mission called the Mars Sample Return mission.  The samples are being collected now and stored in titanium tubes ("the size of a large hot dog") onboard the Perseverance rover currently exploring in the Jezero crater alongside the Ingenuity helicopter.  The future mission would find Perseverance, retrieve the samples and return them to Earth.  It has been in the planning stages for at least a couple of years.

The story, from Thursday, Sept. 21, is that an independent review of the program was called by NASA and the reviewers concluded that the program is unworkable in its current form.  

A conceptual sketch from NASA/JPL-CalTech, showing a helicopter, Perseverance, and the ESA Mars lander on the bottom row, and the ESA's Earth Return orbiter, left, and NASA's Mars Ascent Vehicle top right.  The upper left corner picture appears to be a gibbous Earth, but Earth couldn't possibly appear that big from Mars.  I'll write that off to someone at JPL-CalTech being overly artistic.

NASA had been planning to launch the critical elements of its Mars Sample Return mission, or MSR, as soon as 2028, with a total budget for the program of $4.4 billion. The independent review board's report, which was released publicly on Thursday, concludes that both this timeline and budget are wildly unrealistic.

The review went on to say that the very earliest the mission could launch from Earth is 2030, and this opportunity would only be possible with a total budget of $8 billion to $11 billion. 

Ouch.

The MSR mission is a "deep-space exploration priority for NASA," it said, but then went on to say it has had unrealistic budget and schedule expectations since it started, as well as an "unwieldy" program organization and would end up hurting or ruining other deep-space missions.  Further, this isn't the first time this sort of summary has been talked about.  A report published by Ars Technica about three months ago also raised serious questions about costs and schedule.

In addition to being a priority for NASA, it's a priority for the entire planetary science community as well as being a joint US/European Space Agency mission.  

"MSR represents the critical next step in a strategic program of Mars Exploration spanning the past four decades," the report states. "US and European orbiters and US rovers have found promising sites where life might once have existed."

A sample return mission has been a high priority of the scientific community for decades, including being the most highly requested mission in the last two surveys of the National Academies Decadal Survey of Planetary Science report that informs space policy decisions made by Congress and the president.

The reviewers also noted the importance of NASA and the European Space Agency leading the world in space exploration as a hallmark of soft power. China has previously announced plans to launch its "Tianwen-3" sample return mission to Mars as early as 2028 or 2030, which represents a clear challenge to US scientific leadership in Mars exploration.

All in all the report makes more than 20 findings and recommendations to NASA and JPL that its current plans for the Mars Sample Return mission are broken.  

NASA has responded to the report's release by announcing its own review of the review, saying that this team will make a recommendation by March 2024 regarding a path forward for Mars Sample Return within a balanced overall science program.

Samples from Asteroid Bennu Brought to Earth Today

NASA's OSIRIS-REx probe's samples taken from the asteroid Bennu arrived in Utah today and are in the process of being transported to a lab in Texas for the detailed analysis the sample is intended to get. 

NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission brought back the largest unspoiled sample of material ever returned to Earth from beyond the Moon, probably on the order of about 250 grams, or roughly 8 ounces, according to estimates. The spacecraft collected the samples from asteroid Bennu, a loosely-bound rocky world about the size of a small mountain, during a touch-and-go landing in October 2020.

This is the first asteroid return mission for the US and the third in world history after two missions carried out by Japan, returning in 2010 and 2020.  

I've done a few blog posts on this mission as the last couple of months have passed by, the first post on the last of July, talking about the involvement of astrophysicist Brian May, better known as the virtuoso guitarist for the British rock group Queen and the next article posted on the fifth of September talking about preparations for today's recovery.  While it's tempting to consider this the height of the mission, it's more like the midway point. 

At the end of its 4-billion-mile celestial journey, the OSIRIS-REx mothership spacecraft released a 32-inch-wide (81-centimeter) sample return capsule early Sunday as it darted toward Earth. More than four hours later, the capsule landed at the US Air Force's Utah Test and Training Range southwest of Salt Lake City at 8:52 am local time (10:52 am EDT or 14:52 UTC).

Scientists working on NASA's $1 billion OSIRIS-REx mission watched anxiously as the capsule came back to Earth, braving temperatures of more than 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit after slamming into the atmosphere at 27,650 mph (12.3 kilometers per second). 

The recovered capsule on the ground in Utah this morning - Utah time.  Photo credit: NASA/Keegan Barber

You see, the spacecraft was passing Earth on its way to the asteroid Apophis.  After releasing the landing capsule, the OSIRIS-REx mothership fired thrusters to steer away from its collision course with Earth. The spacecraft then soared a few hundred miles above the planet, as it flew by.  

This next target, named Apophis, is an elongated asteroid with an average diameter of about 1,100 feet (340 meters). It became one of the Solar System's most famous—infamous?—asteroids soon after its discovery in 2004. At that time, preliminary tracking of the asteroid indicated there was a small chance it could impact Earth on April 13, 2029. Since then, more refined data on the orbit of Apophis have eliminated any chance it will strike Earth for at least the next 100 years.

The next phase of the mission, called OSIRIS-Apophis Explorer (OSIRIS-APEX), will take the spacecraft on several more loops around the Sun. Soon after Apophis passes less than 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers) from Earth in 2029, the OSIRIS-APEX spacecraft will enter orbit around the asteroid for more than a year of close-up observations. 

In the immediate future, though, we have this:

The recovery team delivered the sample return capsule to a temporary clean room at the US Army's Dugway Proving Ground, where scientists will prepare it for shipment to a permanent curation facility in Houston. Image Credit: NASA TV

The clean room facility is vital for handling the samples and preventing contamination of the samples by Earth life forms. 

“We’ve been studying meteorites that we think look like Bennu, so I fully expect to find amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, sugars, an energy source for life, nucleobases, parts of the genetic code," said Danny Glavin, a senior scientist for sample return at NASA. "So we’ll see what Bennu tells us. One thing I’ve learned from this mission is (there have been) so many surprises. Sample analysis, probably, won’t be an exception. We're going to be surprised.

“One of the challenges with all meteorites is they get contaminated," Glavin said. "You’re looking for the building blocks of life, and the contamination really makes it hard to tease out what formed in space. That’s why this is so special, these Bennu samples (with) pristine materials. We’re going to be able to trust the organic results from these samples.”

If you grew up watching sci-fi movies where some thing collected in space starts killing everybody and everything around it, you may be thinking of contamination from the other direction - outward from the capsule not contaminating what's in the capsule.  Elsewhere in the article, one of the mission scientists states that Bennu has been in its current state longer than Earth has been here.  In the hostile environment of space, it seems unlikely a dangerous organism could survive that long.

It's Almost Fall

I know that technically fall started early this morning East Coast time, and while it isn't really fall-like weather here, it's not August 54th, either.  It hit 67 this morning for the official low temperature at the airport, and the daily climate report says the normal value for this date is 73.  

WEATHER ITEM   OBSERVED NORMAL       
                VALUE   VALUE  
................................
TEMPERATURE (F)             
  MAXIMUM         85     87     
  MINIMUM         67     73     
  AVERAGE         76     80 

As you can see, the overall picture is that it was a cooler than average for the 23rd, but not a particularly strong cold front.  Not particularly strong winds, just the overall picture of being south of tropical storm Ophelia and getting some of the large-scale effects of that low pressure system.  

It's not unusual.  Actually, if we had gotten a cold front on the first day of fall, that would have been more unusual.

On top of that, I don't want to jinx myself, but nothing around the house is broken at the moment.  I talked about some of it in early August.  The plumbing issues are long resolved, it led to some issues in our refrigerator when some water dumped into the freezer and formed large amounts of ice that had to be broken off and gotten rid of.  The water was apparently from the feed line to the ice maker although exactly how and when isn't certain.  

The big thing mentioned in that August post, that the air conditioner in the shop addition had died, turned into it having to be replaced and that was a big chunk of change.  It got put in a week ago Wednesday and while it has taken some getting used to, it seems to be working properly.  Part of the delay in getting going on replacing it was my slow decision process, looking into alternatives like window units instead of a replacement mini-split. 

The main issue is that I still haven't gotten around to the job I talked about last Sunday - weeding.  Mrs. Graybeard tried Round Up and while it probably was a bit better than if instead of Round Up we had used fertilizer, it certainly didn't act like a "weed killer."  It didn't even seem to be a weed annoyer, just not a weed enhancer.  The adjustments I made to my bike's brakes have held up to a few rides and the fix looks promising at the moment. 

Small Space News Story Roundup 20

A couple of stories that are small but notable - from this week's Rocket Report from Ars Technica.

About that FAA Proposal To Reduce Space Debris

There are two common states to agencies like the FAA "solving" these problems: insane overregulation versus either too little, too late, or both.  Of the two, the first one is most likely to kill real progress, while the second says that the proposal is pretty much meaningless.  Thankfully, this appears to be the case with the FAA proposal.  

The new rule requires US commercial launch operators to dispose of the upper stages of their launch vehicles to reduce the amount of big debris up there.  

The rule, which is now in a 90-day public comment period, would allow companies to meet the requirement through a controlled reentry of the upper stage, maneuvering the spent rocket toward a less congested, or graveyard, orbit, sending the rocket to an Earth-escape trajectory, retrieving the upper stage within five years, or allowing the rocket body to come back to Earth with an uncontrolled reentry within 25 years.

Too little, too late or both? 

The upper stages of nearly all US commercial launches in the last few years would already meet the proposed FAA standards. SpaceX and United Launch Alliance regularly de-orbit their upper stages once they deploy their payloads. On launches carrying satellites to higher orbits, SpaceX and ULA rockets are typically left in transfer or graveyard orbits, where there's a lower risk of a collision with another piece of space junk. It is already US government policy to require similar upper-stage disposal standards on all launches with NASA or military satellites. It's likely these new standards will be felt most by small satellite launch providers, which have tighter mass margins and less leftover fuel on the upper stage for a disposal maneuver.  

Since SpaceX is in the range of 90% of US launch vehicles, and ULA is most of the rest, I'll go with too late and pretty much meaningless.

The next test for the ESA's Ariane 6 vehicle is delayed again.

The Ariane 6 development has been lagging and the European Space Agency is without the replacement for their Ariane 5. A full duration static firing of the Ariane 6 first stage was scheduled for October 3rd, but is now on hold pending resolution of a problem discovered during preparations for the test.

The European Space Agency announced this week that the next major ground test for the continent's long-delayed Ariane 6 rocket won't happen in early October. Ground teams were preparing to load a test version of the Ariane 6 rocket with propellant and fire its main engine for nearly eight minutes on a launch pad in Kourou, French Guiana. This was supposed to be a final exam, of sorts, for the Ariane 6 ahead of its first flight next year. ESA said teams discovered a problem affecting the hydraulic thrust vector control system on the Ariane 6 test rocket. This system will be used to gimbal, or pivot, the rocket's main engine. "Further investigations are necessary before running this long-duration hot firing test," ESA said.

An updated schedule hasn't been released yet, but it would be beyond surprising if they could launch in '23.  The lack of a capable booster is what moved the Euclid space telescope to SpaceX along with a mission called Hera (last story in that roundup) a multi-spacecraft mission to a near-Earth asteroid Didymos to study the impact crater on its smaller partner, Dimorphos, from NASA's DART mission last year.  Euclid is in place (at Lagrange point L2) on orbit and Hera is currently waiting for a favorable launch window about 13 months from now.  

As I noted back before Euclid's launch, the ESA is, at best only temporarily, unable to launch anything.  

Atlas V for First Kuiper Test Mission Being Stacked and Readied 

Now that the SILENTBARKER / NROL-107 Atlas V mission has launched, thus clearing the ULA launch facilities, preparations have begun for the Amazon/Kuiper Internet satellite test mission.  This is the mission that was supposed to fly on the first flight of Vulcan Centaur until both parties agreed to swap the mission onto another Atlas V. 

Less than a week after launching its previous Atlas V mission, United Launch Alliance started stacking its next Atlas V rocket on its mobile launch platform at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. This began with the raising of the first stage with its Russian-made RD-180 engine on September 16. Later in the week, ULA ground crews installed the Centaur upper stage. This is one of 18 Atlas V rockets remaining on ULA's launch manifest before retiring the workhorse rocket in favor of the next-generation Vulcan rocket.

A tentative launch date hasn't been released, just No Earlier Than (NET) October.  

The Centaur upper stage rolls toward the Vertical Integration Facility on Cape Canaveral SFS.  The Atlas V body is visible in the open doors of the VIF as a brownish cylinder just left of the large vertical member marked "ULA".  ULA photo.

Mars Helicopter Sets Another Record

The Mars Ingenuity helicopter is in the rare state that virtually everything it does, and every flight it takes sets a new record of some kind - even if it's simply the flight number.  The helicopter's latest flight, on September 16th, set a new altitude record as well as the flight number at 59.  

Screen capture from NASA JPL's X account

Flight 59 was entirely hovering, with no distance traveled other than that roughly 66 feet vertical travel.  Since its first flight in '21 and the five flight program that was instituted for the little, four-pound helicopter, its mission has primarily turned into a scouting and reconnaissance tool for the Perseverance rover it flew to Mars attached to.

Over the course of its 59 flights, Ingenuity has traveled a total of 43,652 feet (13,304 m) and stayed aloft for 106.5 minutes, according to the flight log.

Before Flight 59, the helicopter's altitude mark stood at 59 feet (18 m). Its single-flight distance and duration records are 2,310 feet (704 m) and 169.5 seconds, set in April 2022 and August 2021, respectively.

Photo reconnaissance for the rover is a good mission for the helicopter.