Hello my dear space nerds! As always, this has been a most exciting week in the realm of shiny tubes that spew fire. And with those that make more fire than they’re supposed to, but I’ll get to that. For now, just know FTS is armed for flight. Onwards!
Quick look:
Successful launches: 1
Failures: 1
Major events this week: Firefly Alpha launch attempt, Perseverance sample capture, CRS-23
Firefly Alpha failure
THAT WAS AWESOME! Firefly Aerospace has risen from the ashes of bankruptcy to ascend into the halls of fiery memoriam with a spectacular failure of their first Alpha launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The vehicle aborted at around T- 12 seconds on the first attempt earlier in the evening before Firefly was able to recycle the vehicle for a new attempt, which succeeded in lifting off. However, shortly after Alpha cleared the launch tower it appears that one of the engines had a failure, which for Alpha is an inordinately big deal. The vehicle’s 4 first stage Reaver engines each only have one-axis-gimbaling instead of two-axis-gimbaling like many engines have, with the Reavers moving in pairs to control the vehicle. An engine failure (aside from problematic asymmetrical thrust) now adds the challenge of a loss of control in one direction. Big problem. About two minutes into flight Alpha pitched wildly in two directions before the launch was terminated and the Flight Termination System explosives triggered to minimize damage in nearby populated areas.
CRS-23
Dragon and Falcon 9 broke the nearly 2-month-long drought of SpaceX launches Sunday with SpaceX’s 23rd resupply mission to the ISS from LC-39A. You know the industry is maturing when a couple months between launches feels like an eternity! C208 was the first Cargo Dragon V2 capsule to fly way back in 2020 on the CRS-21 mission, making -23 its second out of five planned missions to the ISS. CRS-23 carried a routine load of crew supplies and equipment (ie food, water, science experiments, etc) as well as a surprise delivery of ice cream for the astronauts. B1061 completed the first landing on SpaceX’s new autonomous droneship “A Shortfall of Gravitas”, giving ASOG a 100% success record of 1 for 1. CRS-23 docked to the ISS Monday at 10:30 AM to the forward IDA on the Harmony module previously occupied by the Crew-2 Endeavor Crew Dragon capsule before its relocation to the space-facing IDA a few weeks ago. CRS-23 will be at the station for at least 30 days before deorbiting and landing in the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico, depending on weather conditions.
Nauka gets plugged in
The Nauka module has been docked for quite some time, but has been using only power generated from the attached solar panels until Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov embarked on a spacewalk to connect many of the wires and cables that will link the module into the US segment’s power system, which features the characteristic huge solar arrays that provide electricity for most of the station. This is the first of 11 spacewalks planned to support integrating Nauka into the station’s various subsystems. Dates on the future spacewalks have not yet been released.
Stop at the red light!
SpaceShipTwo has been grounded until further notice after the New Yorker reported that pilots on Richard Branson’s Unity-22 flight ignored a yellow warning light that they had deviated from their planned trajectory. This deviation risked the vehicle under-shooting the runway on descent, since SpaceShipTwo launches from a carrier airplane and returns to earth in a glide. This glide requires the spaceplane to have quite a bit of vertical (you read that right, vertical - its counterintuitive) velocity when reentering, and the pilots were not pitching up enough when the rocket engine ignited. The light switched to red when the motor had just a few seconds left to burn, indicating that the situation was getting worse. The prescribed plan for such situations would be to abort the flight and attempt to glide back to the spaceport, but for any number of reasons the pilots did not. Unity-22 flew to 53 miles and landed successfully at Spaceport America, New Mexico but not before leaving its mandated airspace set apart by the FAA. Virgin Galactic responded to the article with a statement emphasizing that FAA officials were present both in mission control and in all post-flight debriefings and that no one was hurt. Virgin Galactic is already in a scheduled maintenance phase planned to take about 3 months to replace and upgrade systems on both the WhiteKnightTwo carrier craft and SpaceShipTwo spaceplane, so the time it will take to get the issue resolved may be shorter than that period and as such Unity-23’s timeline may not be impacted. Time will tell.
Second time’s the charm?
NASA’s Perseverance rover has collected its first Martian rock core! Percy was able to drill a hole in the targeted rock and even took a picture of the sample inside the hollow drill bit, but subsequent pictures were inconclusive as to wether the core was still there. Teams may direct the rover to push the rock into a test tube on the chance that it is there, but that course of action is still under review. For now, we can celebrate that this rock didn’t disintegrate like the last one.
Blue Origin about-face
Blue Origin’s Twitter account has taken a few, erm, controversial steps in promoting its programs, none of which has endeared them any fans. You might recall the various infographic campaigns that compared the experiences of New Shepard and SpaceShipTwo as well as bashed on Starship‘s “immensely complex and high risk” approach to landing humans on the moon. It would appear that someone transferred the keys to that account into more gentle hands as many of those infographics were deleted and Blue went out of their way to send a positive message to Astra and Firefly, both of whom recently had very public launch failures. This is hopefully the start of an about-face, if you will, leaving Blue with a better public perception. The rapid progression of Project Jarvis (which was famously removed from the company’s usual management structure) may also be a step on a path that could lead the company to speed up development of all projects, from Blue Moon to New Glenn to the rumored New Armstrong lander.
Virgin Orbit in Guam
Virgin Orbit has passed an environmental review from the FAA to launch its LauncherOne from Anderson Air Force Base on the island of Guam. Virgin Orbit currently launches from Mojave Air and Space Port, and has agreements to begin launching from Cornwall Airport Newquay in southwest England and is in the process of finalizing details for launches from the Alcântara Space Center in Brazil. This new proposal is a big step for the company, who’s main competitive advantage will be the mobile nature of their launch system. Being able to launch from four facilities with very little infrastructure will allow Virgin Orbit to come to their customers instead of the other way around, plus make the rocket more responsive to demand. The Guam proposal has VO launching up to 25 missions between 2021 and 2025 which, if they can reach this cadence, will be very impressive. This equates to almost 3 launches per month! It is important to note that passing the environmental review does not guarantee Virgin Orbit will be cleared to launch from Guam, its just a step. Nonetheless, it’s an important move forward for LauncherOne to truly make good on its promises.