SOS-20: November 7-13
Hello space nerds and welcome to the 20th State of Space. You’ll notice that there is a little bit of a formatting change; this post is divided into 5 sections: the unfortunate passing of Blue Origin astronaut Glen de Vries, Preburner, Combustion Chamber, SpaceX Updates, and Upcoming Launches. Just trying to make it easier to read what you want and do our best to honor Mr. de Vries. Have a good week!
Blue Origin astronaut Glen de Vries has died in a plane crash
de Vries was flying in a Cessna 172 with flight instructor Thomas Fischer, owner and chief flight instructor at Fischer Aviation, where de Vries registered as a student in 2016. The plane crashed for an unknown reason and both men were pronounced dead on the scene by New Jersey State Police. de Vries was 49 and served as vice chairman of life sciences and healthcare at Dassault Systèmes, a French software company focusing on modeling virtual experiences. Fischer was 54. Ad Astra Glen and Thomas o7
Preburner:
Successful launches: 3
Failures: 0
Major events: Glen de Vries passing, SpinLaunch suborbital test, RAISE-2 launch, Crew-2 return, Crew-3 launch
Combustion Chamber:
New Glenn goes for a stroll around KSC
Blue Origin took their GS1 (Glenn Stage number 1) on a tour of KSC this week, presumably checking that the massive stage will fit through the sometimes cramped traffic conditions of the spaceport. The ~60-meter long, 7-meter diameter booster plus its mobile trailer are a little bigger than the average semi-trailer, meaning even simple things like a slight curve of the road could cause the vehicle to roll off into the swampland - not a fate you want for the hardware you’re using for fit checks and to validate ground systems. The trip also allowed for some PR points, like the pictures of New Glenn at historic KSC sites such as the VAB.
France may join Artemis Accords
American Vice President Kamala Harris said on Thursday that French President Emmanuel Macron wants France to join the Artemis Accords, a series of documents that outline how different countries will cooperate under the Artemis Program for the peaceful exploration of the Moon, Mars, and other “astronomical bodies,” and how commercial operations such as mining would be handled on such. France would join (in alphabetical order, as of this writing) Australia, Brazil, Canada, Isle of Man, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Poland, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and the United States as member states if they sign, which is not assured. If France joins, it would allow the country to formally participate in the Artemis Program with French astronauts on the lunar surface; French technology powering lunar rovers, habitats, and satellites; and a way to secure French commercial interests on the Moon. The only thing that may stand in the way is that France supports the Moon Treaty of 1979, which doesn’t allow commercial applications on the Moon (a direct contrast to the Artemis Accords).
SpinLaunch launches first suborbital test
Rockets have had a monopoly on getting things into space for three-quarters of a century now. SpinLaunch, who you may remember filed for a V-band satellite constellation license with the FCC last week, wants to change that by flinging payloads into space with a centrifuge. SpinLaunch used a sub-scale centrifuge at 20% power to launch a small projectile to “tens of thousands of feet”. Youtuber Scott Manley did some back-of-the-napkin calculations to show that with a full-scale 100-meter-diameter centrifuge running at 100% power at the angle SpinLaunch is planning, a projectile would be at around the same height and speed as a Falcon 9 at stage separation. This means that, with a little work and lots of tests, SpinLaunch could get into orbit with a much smaller vehicle than needed today. Best of luck!
Virgin Galatic has sold >700 tickets
Virgin Galactic announced that they sold ~100 tickets for $450,000 each after reopening ticket sales in August, up from the $200-250k per seat prices of a decade ago when the company was young and strapped for cash. This brings the total number of reserved seats to more than 700, about 116 flights worth of people. They’ll all still have to wait for the end of an extended maintenance period while VG works on both the VMS Unity SpaceShipTwo vehicle and VMS Eve WhiteKnightTwo carrier craft, but those original customers will be first in line when VG begins regular commercial service.
This was all laid out during Virgin Galactic’s Q3 earnings call, where the company provided a general timeline of the maintenance. VMS Eve will be ready to resume flights sometime in Q3 2022 when it will hopefully carry the first SpaceShipThree (named VMS Imagine) on qualification tests. VMS Unity will be ready in Q4 of the same year, with commercial flights beginning in early 2023.
Morpheus unveils Sphere product ecosystem
German university spinoff Morpheus announced a new product ecosystem it’s calling “Sphere”, a series of easy-to-use satellite propulsion, autopilot, and mission design software elements designed to make it easier for satellite builders to mass-manufacture their own satellites and put them in effective constellations. There are five new products in the announcement:
Sphere Go: a collection of high-efficiency electric-propulsion thrusters with built-in controllers and a new, cheap fuel;
Sphere Direct: a plug-and-play satellite autopilot for combating atmospheric drag;
Sphere Flow: constellation design software;
Sphere Safe: hardware-as-a-service (managed computer servers) cost model for satellite components; and
Sphere Gateway: a web application for guiding customers through using the above products in tandem.
Morpheus’ new fuel is a proprietary metal alloy-based propellant that requires no special handling and is nontoxic and noncorrosive, a big plus for large constellation operators. The propellant allows the company’s own electric propulsion systems to fire continuously for up 5 years. Since very few (if any) operators will need that, Morpheus has assured that customers can just pay a list price of $1,000 for a propulsion module (such as Sphere Go). Customers would then pay by usage or with a subscription.
Epsilon 5 launches nine satellites
After over a month of delays, JAXA’s Epsilon 5 has launched the RAISE-2 satellite along with eight other technology demonstration payloads into a 600 km low Earth orbit. RAISE-2 (Rapid Innovative Payload Demonstration Satellite-2) is itself a technology demonstrator, carrying six experiments testing miniaturization techniques for satellite designers. The other eight satellites were the Debris Removal Unprecedented Micro Satellite (DRUMS) for capturing space debris, TeikyoSat-4 satellite bus demonstrator, HIBARI satellite with a Variable-Shape Attitude Control (VSAC) system, Z-SAT with an experimental infrared imager, the ASTERISC CubeSat for studying cosmic dust particles in orbit, the KOSEN-1 CubeSat for studying the planet Jupiter, and NanoDragon from Vietnam. This was the fifth flight of an Epsilon 5, a small solid-fueled launch vehicle designed by JAXA to make it cheaper for small satellites to launch.
Ingenuity’s 15th flight is successful
According to its flight log, the Mars helicopter Ingenuity has started the journey back north with Perseverance, headed for the Three Forks area that is the second focus of the Mars 2020 extended mission. Ingenuity will fly ahead of Perseverance and scout out the terrain to find the most energy-efficient and least-risky path for the SUV-sized rover to traverse before stopping to recharge and cool down, a difficult process due to the low solar power that far from the sun and extremely thin atmosphere of Mars. Unlike on Earth, heat doesn’t dissipate into the air; most of it is emitted as infrared radiation or through the helicopter’s legs into the ground. Ingenuity flew 407 meters over 128.8 seconds (2 minutes and 8.8 seconds) at a max altitude of 12 meters (~39 ft) and a max speed of 5 meters per second (~11 mph).
SpaceX updates:
Crew-2 return
The Crew-2 astronauts and their Crew Dragon capsule “Endeavour” splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico late Monday night, completing their mission after 199 days in space. NASA’s WB-57 tracking plane provided IR images of the descending capsule, giving us a scary moment when it appeared one of the main parachutes had failed to open. However, the chute fully deployed a few moments later and SpaceX and NASA both declared that the landing was completely nominal.
Crew-3 launch and docking
After Crew-2’s successful landing Monday night, Crew-3 launched on their own Crew Dragon “Endurance,” named after the ship used by Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of the same name. The Space Shuttle Endurance had the same namesake. Raja Chari, Thomas Marshburn, and Kayla Barron from NASA as well as Matthias Maurer from ESA were the crew of this flight, serving as Commander, Pilot, and Mission Specialists 1 and 2, respectively. Crew-3 is part of Expedition 66 on the ISS, which they formally joined when they docked to the ISS Tuesday evening.
Starlink-4-1 launch
SpaceX launched 53 second-generation Starlink internet satellites on Saturday from a foggy Cape Canaveral Space Force Base, setting the scene for some beautiful photography. These satellites will help SpaceX have less spotty commercial service as they open the service to higher and higher latitudes. Booster B1058 flew on its 9th mission today, landing on the Just Read The Instructions droneship about a year and a half after its first flight on the Demo-2 mission that carried Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the ISS to complete flight qualification of Crew Dragon capsules.
Starship 6-engine static fire
SpaceX may have finished testing of Starship S20 with a test of all six engines; the three sea-level Raptor engines like those that have been used on all Starship flights so far and the three vacuum optimized Raptors that will make their debut flight on the upcoming Orbital Flight Test. The static fire (where the vehicle was bolted down to its launch mount) occurred after a preburner test of those same engines earlier on Friday. CEO Elon Musk tweeted after the test that it was a “Good static fire with all six engines!” Now, all that could be left is the Booster 4 testing campaign, if the static fire was as good as Musk implied. (I’m skeptical for now.)
Shift4 Payments signs deal with Starlink
Jared Isaccman’s Shift4 signed an exclusive 5-year deal to process Starlink payments this week, with processing of domestic (US) payments transitioning to the company over the next 120 days. In those five years, Shift4 estimates that Starlink will bring in revenues exceeding $100 billion (SpaceX’s current value right now) which, even with the low share of the profit that goes to processing companies, is big money. Isaccman mentioned during an earnings call that Shift4 products such as SkyTab, a restaurant point-of-sale service, will probably be used at SpaceX locations in Texas such as the planned High Bay restaurant.
Upcoming launches:
Electron Flight 22 | Love At First Insight on Monday, Nov. 15.
Vega Flight VV-20 | CERÉS 1, 2, and 3 on Tuesday, Nov. 16.
Astra LV0007 | STP-27AD2 orbital attempt on Thursday, Nov. 18