Whew! What a week. A lot’s happened recently, but wait! If this post was shared with you, please consider subscribing to The State of Space.
Quick look:
5 successful launches
0 failures
Major events this week: ISS resupply, small launcher updates, BN3 rollout
Cygnus leaves station
Cygnus NG-15 launched on an Antares rocket back in January carrying 3,800 kg of cargo to the ISS, making the heaviest Commercial Resupply Mission to fly. In honor of her contributions to the advancement of orbital mechanics and as part of Black History Month, Northrop Grumman named this Cygnus Katherine Johnson. After almost 130 days in space, NG-15 was un-berthed from the nadir (earth side) of the Unity module and deployed several CubeSats before being deorbited over the Pacific Ocean.
Transporter-2 gets to orbit; lands booster
Wasn’t that awesome? Transporter-2 carried 88 satellites to sun-synchronous orbit, and landed the first stage back at Landing Zone 1 just a few minutes later. The launch originally scrubbed on Friday of last week for vehicle checkouts and again on Tuesday due to a helicopter in the no-fly zone around the launch site, which brought some (self-righteous?) indignation from Elon Musk via Twitter. For anyone who may not be familiar, sun-sync orbits are polar orbits with a slight retrograde tendency that makes use of the oblateness of the Earth to actually change the longitude of the ascending node over time so that spacecraft will pass over an area at the same time of day all year long. From Cape Canaveral, polar launches can’t launch straight south without passing over habituated areas, which isn’t good in case of emergency, so SpaceX had to perform what’s called a “dog leg” maneuver: Transporter-2 launched south-by-southwest and then curved the trajectory around the east coast of Florida so that the rocket never passed over land on either launch or landing. The launch comprised 85 customer satellites and 3 of SpaceX’s in-house Starlink internet satellites. This was the 8th launch and landing of B1060.
Russia launches resupply mission to ISS
Progress MS-17 launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome Tuesday evening carrying about 2,900 kilograms (6,400 lbs) of supplies for the crew on the ISS, which it arrived at late Thursday. The cargo manifest encompassed 1,000 kg of fuel and compressed gasses (oxygen, nitrogen, that kind of thing), 420 kg of water, and 1,500 kg of food, equipment, experiments, and special interest items. After all this cargo is unloaded, MS-17 has another important job: removing a docking adapter. The yet-to-be-launched Nauka (“science” in Russian) module will have an adapter covering a newer, more structurally sound style of docking port. The adapter on the station allows the current line of Progress and Soyuz spacecraft to dock and will be used by visiting craft until the upcoming Prichal (“pier”) module is launched with the same newer style of port. After Nauka gets to the station MS-17 will move to the module and, when its mission is over, undock both itself and the adapter from the station to make way for Prichal. The Progress series of freighters burns up in the atmosphere and can not return any payload to Earth.
Tubular Bells, Part One
Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne is a rather interesting launch vehicle launched not from the ground, but dropped from under the wing of a Boeing 747. With a payload capacity of 500 kg to Low Earth Orbit this vehicle is definitely a small launcher, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t amazing. When the rocket is dropped, it free-flies for a few seconds before the complicated ignition sequence of the first stage. Solid motors push the rocket forward aggressively to settle the propellant into the feed lines and the bottom of the tanks before the main Newton3 engine ignites. This is necessary because when LauncherOne is dropped it is horizontal, which means gravity is pulling the propellant to the side of the tanks. The 747 lets the rocket get above the thickest parts of the atmosphere and also allows the rocket to launch from just about anywhere, but doesn’t do much in terms of gaining velocity. To date 6 airports from 4 countries have opened their runways to the Cosmic Girl mothership and LauncherOne rocket. Sorry for this long spiel, but this is such an interesting system. Tubular Bells, Part One will launch 3 CubeSats for the DoD Space Test Program, BRIK II for the Netherland’s military and two optical satellites for SatRevolution, STORK-4 and -5 for a total of 7 satellites. This mission was also broadcasted live, which meant we got to see the crazy oscillations after the drop. They don’t appear to have impacted the rocket’s performance and they have occurred at each LauncherOne launch attempt, so for now we just have to roll with them ;). Oh, and in case you’re wondering at the name, Tubular Bells was the first music album released by Virgin Records (another company owned by Richard Branson under the Virgin brand) from the 1970s.
Nauka module gets delayed… again
*Sigh*. Nauka, Russia’s upcoming science module for the ISS, has been delayed by at least a week to NET July 22nd. This is the latest delay pushing the module back from its original launch date in 2007. Russia has been sparse on details but it seems that workers at RCS Energia forgot to install thermal insulation around several external science modules, with other issues observed in the fuel transfer system. Nauka has already been encapsulated in its payload fairing and mated with the Proton rocket, so expect delays with rolling the vehicle back to the hanger and carefully removing the fairing to begin re-inspection. This delay may mean that Progress MS-17 will not be the Progress to remove the docking adapter (see above).
Relativity Space gains new manufacturing area
Relativity Space, a launch company working to 3D print its rockets, announced that they were able to purchase 1 million+ square feet of factory space in Long Beach, California from aviation giant Boeing. Relativity has yet to reach orbit or even the pad but is already planning for the future with the successor to their Terran 1 rocket, the Terran R. Terran R will be a 3d printed fully reusable two-stage medium lift orbital rocket that hopes to compete with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and ULA’s Atlas V and the lighter Vulcan configurations. The company’s current 120,000 square-foot factory has run out of room to expand operations past the handful of developmental printers currently installed, and Relativity was feeling the strain. The new headquarters moves Relativity into Long Beach alongside Rocket Lab, Virgin Orbit, and many other new space companies as well as SpaceX’s Falcon 9 booster shipping operations.
Astra gets on the stock market
Small satellite launch company Astra officially merged with a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) this week to become a publicly traded company. Rocket Lab and several other launch companies are expecting to follow in Astra’s footsteps to become public companies. Astra has yet to reach orbit but came very close with Rocket 3.2 on their second attempt late last year but fell short due to an off fuel mixture. Rocket 3.3 should launch later this summer with a stretched first stage and improved second stage fuel mixer.
Super Heavy booster rolled out to pad for testing
YAY! The prototype of SpaceX’s Super Heavy called BN3 rolled from the High Bay where it was assembled to suborbital pad A for testing. BN3 is not expected to fly, but Elon Musk has said that the next booster, BN4, will be used for Starship’s first orbital launch attempt. BN3 should undergo cryogenic and pressure testing, as well as raptor engine integration and maybe even a small static fire. Looking at the booster, it is extremely rough around the edges with exposed wires and piping similar to what was seen on the earliest Starship prototypes but like with Starship these should eventually get cleaned up. There are no grid fins installed, although several people documenting Starship’s progress in Boca Chica have spotted grid fin segments arriving. BN3 is thought to be made of 4mm stainless steel rather than 3mm steel like later boosters will be.
Side note: the first Rvac was spotted at Starbase this week, likely for the orbital attempt later this year.
China studying orbiting power farm
Solar panels on the ground are pretty fickle things. They don’t generate power during the night, and seasonal variation in sunlight that reaches the ground makes output fluctuate through the year. Solar arrays in space, especially in high orbits, generate more power for a longer portion of time and without seasonal variation. China has announced plans to build an orbiting power station in GEO, with components being launched on the upcoming Long March 9 super heavy lift launch vehicle. The orbiting facility could weigh as much as 9 million kg and take hundreds of launches to complete, but would generate gigawatts of power for China’s rapidly growing energy demand. The solar collection system is planned to cover an area over a square kilometer in size with energy being sent to Earth via microwave transmission or lasers. A technology demonstration mission is planned for 2022 with megawatt scale generation by 2030 and the full station by 2050.
MASTA telescope begins construction
The Multi-Application Survey Telescope Array began construction this week in China’s mountainous northwest Qinghai Province, working to use the thinner atmosphere to its advantage to provide China with space debris tracking capabilities in high orbits. This type of ground station is a key area of space-infrastructure that China has lagged behind in for decades, and this new telescope should allow them to better avoid on-orbit collision with debris too small for their current scopes to detect. Lenghu, the nearest town to the construction site, already hosts six research units and eight telescope projects with plans to become China’s leading astronomical research center. MASTA should be finished sometime before 2023.
Mercury 13 trainee gets ticket to space
For a long time, women couldn’t become astronauts (in the United States at least). That doesn’t mean that some women didn’t train for the possibility, however. In the early 60’s, a group of thirteen women later dubbed the Mercury 13 passed a series of tests identical to the training of the Mercury 7 astronauts and lobbied for the inclusion of women in the space program but were never allowed into the astronaut corps. Wally Funk was the head of that group of thirteen women, and she finally has her ticket to space. She’ll be flying on New Shepard-16, the capsule’s inaugural crewed launch, at the special invitation of Jeff Bezos later this month after a sixty year wait. Funk will become the oldest person to reach space at the age of 82.
OneWeb #8
OneWeb launched 36 more internet satellites to polar Low Earth Orbit on Thursday, bringing the company’s orbital fleet to 254 operational satellites. The constellation needs to have 600 satellites on orbit at a time to provide global internet coverage, but the 254 currently orbiting are sufficient to begin providing service to latitudes above 50 degrees and below -50 degrees, a major milestone for the company. It’s a shame there was so much talk about the glories of OneWeb, because what we could see of the launch was amazing. The Soyuz 2.1b launcher took off in full darkness but quickly arced high enough to be in sunlight, which was interesting to watch. This launch was originally scheduled for earlier this month, but a suspected fuel leak in the Fregat upper stage delayed the launch. An interesting side note: the Fregat stage uses hypergolic UDMH and NO4, which means there is no need for a separate engine ignition system like TEA-TEB or a spark igniter. This allows the S5.92 engine to be restarted as much as 50 times in a single mission!
Artemis I rideshare
JAXA and NASA have announced that 2 Japanese CubeSats will be accompanying the Artemis I mission to the moon. EQUULEUS (EQUilibriUm Lunar-Earth point 6U Spacecraft) and OMOTENASHI (Outstanding MOon exploration TEchnologies demonstrated by NAno Semi-Hard Impactor) are being built by the University of Tokyo on behalf of JAXA to study the environments of the Moon and Earth. EQUULEUS will image the Earth’s plasmasphere from the Earth-Moon L2 point while OMOTENASHI will serve as a technology demonstrator for very small spacecraft to explore the Moon’s surface. The two spacecraft will be housed with at least 11 other small satellites in the Orion Stage Adapter en route to the Moon.
Chang Zheng 2D launch
Almost missed it! A Chinese Chang Zheng 2D rocket launched Saturday afternoon from LC-9 at the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center on a polar trajectory. The CZ-2D, part of the Chang Zheng (called Long March internationally) rocket series runs on UDMH and N2O4 for both stages with four YF-21C engines on the first stage and one YF-24C engine on the second stage. The rocket carried 5 satellites into a sun-synchronous orbit.