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Postby Shyster » Mon May 10, 2021 11:45 pm

China slams Western double standards over rocket debris and NASA criticism, with reminder about SpaceX rocket that fell on farm
https://www.rt.com/news/523373-beijing- ... cket-nasa/

The Chinese government is claiming a "Western double standard" about the coverage of its Long March 5 core conducting an uncontrolled reentry, and they've pointed to the reentry of a SpaceX upper stage over Washington state last month as an example. I'm going to call bullcrap on that. First, SpaceX normally conducts controlled reentries on the Falcon 9 second stage, and the reason that the one in March reentered like that was because something went wrong with the reentry burn. It was a bug, not a feature. The Long March 5B has now launched twice, and neither time has the core performed any sort of controlled reentry burn. The Chinese lack of control is a feature, not a bug. Second, the upper stage of the Falcon 9 is around three tons in mass, while the Long March 5B core is over 20 tons. It's seven times the size. Third, China has for years been dropping spent rocket stages containing toxic propellants, on populated areas. There are videos of spent Long March boosters landing right on people's houses. The Chinese government has a long record of not giving a crap whether its spent rocket stages land on its own people, so forgive the rest of the world for doubting that China is taking pains to minimize where its junk lands now.

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Postby shafnutz05 » Tue May 11, 2021 7:04 am

Wallops had to scrub for a third consecutive night due to upper level winds. Which sucks because the skies finally cleared here.

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Postby shafnutz05 » Tue May 11, 2021 7:20 am

This compilation is crazy, although the quality goes down as the videos go on. The first one made me really uneasy for some reason.


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Postby Shyster » Tue May 11, 2021 6:58 pm

That first one was a Russian Proton launch carrying Russia's equivalent of GPS satellites. Some idiot hammered in an attitude sensor upside down even though the sensor was keyed to fit into its socket only one way. I think it was a yaw sensor, so when the rocket wanted to steer left, it thought it was steering right, and vice versa. There are plenty more videos of that incident, including a video of windows shattering at the Baikonur Cosmodrome from the explosion's shockwave. Many of the videos came from Arianespace personnel. That was right after Arianespace signed a contract with Roscosmos to launch Soyuz rockets from Arianespace's facility in South America, so a whole bunch of Arianespace personnel were invited to the launch as VIP observers. Oopsie.

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Postby relantel » Thu May 13, 2021 1:03 pm

The worm is back!

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Postby Shyster » Sat May 15, 2021 7:07 pm

Space recap.

SpaceX conducted the first completely successful landing test for its Starship vehicle. SN15 lived to fly again.



SpaceX has a very ambitious test schedule that could see the first orbital test of Starship and the Super Heavy booster before the end of 2021. In addition, SpaceX won NASA's Artemis program to build a lunar-landing system, and a lunar version of Starship was what SpaceX bid on that program. So SpaceX and Starship are expected to put humans on the Moon for the first time since Apollo. SpaceX also recently set a major reuse milestone with the 10th launch and recovery of a Falcon 9 booster. The original goal of the Block 5 Falcon 9s was to fly at least 10 times without needing major refurbishment, and SpaceX has now demonstrated that goal.

Rocket Lab experienced a failure of its Electron vehicle last night, which was attempting to launch two satellites for BlackSky Global, which offers commercial orbital imaging services. The flight appeared normal up to staging. The second stage appeared to separate successfully and did briefly ignite, but it appeared to almost immediately veer sharply to one side, and the telemetry may have indicated that it went into a tumble. No cause given yet, but it may be an issue of control or thrust-vectoring for the Electron's second-stage engine. That is the second failure for the Electron; it had a second-stage electrical failure that caused a loss of mission back in July 2020.

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Postby relantel » Tue May 18, 2021 4:14 pm

Read that SpaceX got the contract to lift off the PPE and HALO elements of Gateway. The announcement was in February, probably buried in the Mars excitement. With a launch date no earlier than May 2024.

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa ... ar-outpost

Gateway itself has some of the same buy-ins from international partners as the ISS.
Gateway international partners will provide important contributions to the lunar outpost, comprising advanced external robotics, additional habitation, refueling capability, and possibly other enhancements. Canada announced in February 2019 its intention to participate in the Gateway and contribute advanced external robotics. In December 2020, the Canadian Space Agency awarded a contract to MDA to build the Canadarm3 for Artemis deep space missions. In October 2019, Japan announced plans to join the United States on the Gateway with contributions of habitation components and logistics resupply. In November 2019, the European Space Agency (ESA) received authorization and funding to support its contributions to the Gateway including habitation and refueling. In October 2020, ESA signed an agreement with NASA to contribute habitation and refueling modules and enhanced lunar communications to the Gateway. ESA also provides two additional European Service Modules for NASA’s Orion spacecraft. In November 2020, Canada signed a Gateway agreement to contribute external robotics and in December 2020, Japan signed an agreement to partner with NASA on the Gateway as well.

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Postby relantel » Wed May 26, 2021 2:29 pm

New gateway renderings released today:

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Postby eddy » Fri May 28, 2021 2:01 pm


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Postby Gaucho » Sat May 29, 2021 11:03 am


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Postby relantel » Thu Jun 03, 2021 12:14 pm

Seems former Sen Bill Nelson, now NASA Administrator, said yesterday Artemis I, the first unmanned Artemis mission, will launch later this year.

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Postby Shyster » Thu Jun 03, 2021 2:39 pm

Let me translate:

"Artemis I, a massive pork project that has cost billions of dollars, may actually get off the ground this year and do something that we could have paid SpaceX to do a couple years ago for 1/100th the price. We also look forward to the Space Launch System becoming completely obsolete as soon as SpaceX gets the Starship/Super Heavy into service. That should take less time that it took us to build the core for the SLS, which is based on the existing shuttle tank design and off-the-shelf used shuttle engines."

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Postby Gaucho » Thu Jun 10, 2021 3:39 am


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Postby Kane » Thu Jun 10, 2021 7:27 am

Image

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Postby shafnutz05 » Thu Jun 10, 2021 7:32 am


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Postby Kane » Thu Jun 10, 2021 7:33 am

That dodint is going to need her eyes looked at now.

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Postby Gaucho » Sun Jun 27, 2021 12:02 pm

Image

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Postby Gaucho » Wed Jul 07, 2021 6:46 pm

Image
Earth, from Mars (just left of center).

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Postby Shyster » Wed Jul 07, 2021 10:27 pm

Image
Earth, from Mars (just left of center).
:thumb: Beautiful.

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Postby Shyster » Wed Jul 07, 2021 10:39 pm

Interesting article from Ars Technica on the relationship between Blue Origin and ULA. ULA in 2014 picked Blue Origin's BE-4 engines to power its new Vulcan rocket, which is slated to replace both the Atlas and Delta families. Vulcan was supposed to fly for the first time this year, but it looks like the BE-4 engines aren't anywhere near ready, and may not be for a while. ULA hasn't even been provided with a set of flight-ready BE-4 engines, and ULA would need months of its own tests with such engines before being able to launch. Ars also reports that BO wants to optimize the engines for reuse, but ULA doesn't care about that since they plan to expend them.

Increasingly, the ULA-Blue Origin marriage is an unhappy one
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/07 ... happy-one/

I wish every space company the best, and Blue Origin is no exception. That said, when compared to others like SpaceX and Rocket Labs, BO has been glacially slow. A bit of trivia is that BO was actually founded in 2000, which was two years before SpaceX was founded in 2002. And even though BO is two years older, it still hasn't flown any actual passengers on its suborbital New Shepherd "space tourist" rocket, let alone put anything in orbit. Based on some of the space-related message boards I read, the community of space fans is getting a little disappointed with BO, which has made a whole lot of promises with not much to show for them. That the BE-4 engines are running way behind schedule is turning into "par for the course" for BO.

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Postby Shyster » Thu Jul 15, 2021 5:38 pm

Space News!

SpaceX has been a little quiet recently, and the pace of Starlink launches has slowed, because they now need to fill in more of the polar north/south orbits, and to do that they needed to send one of their droneships back through the Panama Canal so that they can conduct launches from their pad at Vandenberg. The need to do so may be lessened because it looks like the third droneship (named "A Shortfall of Gravitas") has finished construction. It looks a little sleeker than the existing ships, and in this video it's sailing on its own, which may indicate that it doesn't need to be towed out to position like the two current droneships.



Virgin Galactic had a successful first suborbital flight, and Blue Origin has its flight coming up shortly. I don't wish ill of either company, but honestly these suborbital "tourist" vehicles are little more than amusement rides for the ultra-wealthy. Good for them, but even if I had the money, I wouldn't be interested. Orbit or bust.

The Russians may be finally ready to launch the Nauka module to the ISS on July 21. Nauka is also known as the Multipurpose Laboratory Module, and it's based on the same design as the Zarya module, which was the very first component of the ISS to be launched. Nauka was built as a structural spare for Zarya way back in the 1990s, and the Russians have been planning on completing and launching it for more than 20 years. Nauka has equipment for experiments, docking, and cargo, will serve as a crew work and rest area, and (like Zarya) has guidance and navigation systems (including engines and an attitude control system) that will be used as backups for Zarya and can control the whole ISS. The launch will be on a Proton rocket.

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Postby Shyster » Fri Jul 16, 2021 7:17 pm

For the last month, the Hubble Space Telescope has been in safe mode with computer problems. NASA tracked down the fault to an issue with the main computer's power supply, and they decided to switch over to the backup computer system, which hasn't been powered on in decades. It looks like the switch was successful, and Hubble is now back online.

Hubble Space Telescope lives: NASA gets backup hardware up and running
https://www.cnet.com/news/hubble-space- ... d-running/

Scott Manley a couple weeks ago did a video on this topic that goes into the history of NASA standard computer systems, including the systems on the Hubble. To say the Hubble's computers are a little out of date would be a vast understatement.


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Postby relantel » Fri Jul 23, 2021 3:55 pm

No more shuttle missions to rescue/repair Hubble... Guess they are fortunate the backup system worked.

Seems NASA's Gateway program now has a twitter account of its own... https://twitter.com/NASA_Gateway

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Postby Shyster » Fri Jul 23, 2021 8:18 pm

The new Russian Nauka module launched successfully on a Proton-M rocket a couple days ago, but there were reports of issues with Nauka's fuel system and main engines. It looks like the problems might have been rectified, and the module has carried out some of the burns necessary to rendezvous with the ISS. Seriously Roscosmos. You've been working on this module for more than a decade, and this is what you do?

I have to imagine it must be pretty demoralizing to be part of the Russian space program. Nothing is new, you're flying vehicles that were originally designed 50+ years ago, and your boss is a Putin buddy who talks big but there's no real money to do anything new or interesting or groundbreaking.

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Postby relantel » Mon Jul 26, 2021 3:41 pm

50th anniversary of Apollo 15:

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