Tag: Space X crewed Dragon

Space News for August 2019.

There have been a lot of things happening in the exploration of space lately, some of it’s been hopeful, some not so much. Both manned and robotic space missions are concerned and with so many stories to cover let’s get to it.

Perhaps the best news concerns the successful test of the Orion manned capsule’s launch abort escape system that NASA conducted on the 2nd of July. The entire test went perfectly with a small booster rocket taking the unmanned Orion capsule to approximately 10,000 m, see image below of takeoff. This altitude was chosen for the test because on an actual flight using NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) as the launch vehicle 10,000 m will represent the time of ‘max-Q’ or maximum pressure due to air resistance.

The Orion Space Capsule sits atop it’s test booster ready for its abort Test (Credit: Spaceflight Now)

At 10,000 m Orion’s abort system fired its own rockets to pull the capsule away from the booster, demonstrating its ability to swiftly remove the astronauts to a safe distance from any potential danger. This latest test clearly shows that the Orion capsule and its support systems are ready for their first mission. Now all we need is for the SLS to be completed in order to get the Orion into space and beyond Earth orbit.

The moment of ignition of the Orion capsule’s Abort rockets (Credit: CBS News)

As usual Space X is also making news. Thanks to their reusable Falcon 9 rocket the Hawthorne California based commercial launch corporation is swiftly coming to dominate the business of putting satellites and cargo into Low Earth Orbit (LOE).  This month however it’s their Falcon Heavy rocket that’s pushing the envelope. On the 25th of June Space X successfully launched its Falcon Heavy rocket for the third time placing an incredible 24 separate satellites into Low Earth Orbit (LOE).

Liftoff of the third launch of Space X’s Falcon Heavy rocket (Credit: Business Insider)

This latest mission again demonstrated the ability of Space X to recover and reuse its first stage boosters with the two side boosters of the Falcon heavy returning safely to Cape Canaveral. In addition, for the first time ever the nosecone fairing, used to protect the cargo during the launch, was successfully caught in a net aboard a recovery ship, ready to be reused as well.

Unfortunately the Falcon Heavy’s central booster missed its recovery ship, exploding in the water nearby. However this launch required the central booster to attempt the longest, 1,200 km downrange, landing yet by Space X so a safe landing was considered to be a 50 / 50 shot at best.

There is also some bad news for Space X however. The tentative date for the first manned launch of their Dragon capsule has been pushed back into November and is likely to be even further delayed. After a successful unmanned test of their Crewed Dragon Capsule back in April there had been hopes that a manned mission could occur as early as this month or August. Unfortunately a later static test of the capsule’s abort system produced an ‘anomaly’, in other words an explosion, which led to this latest delay. This is yet another setback for NASA’s commercial crew program and leaves the space agency dependent for a little while longer on the Russian Soyuz space vehicle for getting American astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

The ‘Anomaly’ that occured during testing of the Space X Dragon Capsule (Credit: Express.co.uk)

As I mentioned above Space X is grabbing an ever larger share of the space launch industry, which if you think about it means that somebody has to be losing their share of the market. One of the organizations that are falling behind is the European Space Agency (ESA) whose Arian 5 rocket was just five years ago arguably the most popular vehicle for putting a commercial satellite into orbit. The reduction in cost that the reusability of the Falcon 9 rocket provides however, has made the Arian 5 effectively obsolete so now the ESA is rapidly trying to play catch up to the American firm.

Therefore the ESA is looking into developing a reusable rocket of its own in order to compete with Space X and regain some of their lost market. The space agency has recently announced that five million euros have been provided to the German space agency, DLR to perform an initial design study of such a rocket which has been given the tentative name of Callisto.

Going by the stated goals of the project the result of the study is certain to be a virtual copy of the Falcon 9. In fact the Europeans are quite open about it. “We are convinced that it is absolutely necessary to investigate Retro Propulsion Assisted Landing Technologies,” that’s the formal name of the landing technique used by the Falcon 9, “to make re-usability state-of-the-art in Europe.”

Planned European rocket ‘Callisto’ looks little different from the Falcon 9 (Credit: Space News)

For my last story this month I’ll discuss something a bit more long range, and a lot further from planet Earth. On the 22nd of June NASA announced a new mission that will be a part of their New Frontiers program. The chosen mission is to send a robotic aerial drone that will fly in the dense atmosphere of Saturn’s moon Titan.

To say that this mission, which has been named ‘Dragonfly’, will be ambitious is putting it mildly; there are a large number of engineering difficulties to be overcome. The surface gravity of Titan is only one quarter that of Earth however, and the moon’s atmosphere is fully 50% denser than Earth’s so the idea of a flying probe seems quite feasible.

Mission profile of NASA’s planned Dragonfly mission the Titan (Credit: Wikipedia)

As I see it there are two big problems to overcome, power and communications. Power is a problem because Titan is so far from the Sun that any kind of solar power is useless. All of our probes beyond Jupiter so far have been powered by Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs) and NASA plans on during the same for Dragonfly. Nevertheless flying takes a lot of energy so there will undoubtedly be a considerable amount of time spent on the ground recharging Dragonfly’s batteries between flights.

Communications will be a tougher problem to deal with because of a very simple fact: at its closest Titan is more than a light-hour’s distance from Earth. This means that if the drone encounters violent, buffeting winds or some other unexpected problem while its flying the controllers back on Earth won’t even know that it’s happening for at least an hour. And then any instructions sent to the probe will take an equal amount of time to get back to it. By that time the emergency would probably be over, or the probe may have crashed and been destroyed!

Probably the only way around this problem will be for the probe to have the most sophisticated computer Artificial Intelligence (AI) ever installed on a space probe. Such a computer will be essential in order to enable the space probe to handle whatever Titan throws at it, without human instruction or control.

Expected to launch in 2026 and reach Titan in 2034 Dragonfly is the sort of deep space mission that would have been considered impossible just a few years ago. The space agency’s recent successes with its Mars rovers and space probes to Jupiter along with asteroids and comets have given NASA the skills, and the confidence to even tackle flying on Titan!

Anthropologists have discovered an entirely new Chimpanzee Culture and I’ll bet you didn’t even know that Chimps had Culture.

Sixty years ago the very idea of that Chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes, living in different areas of Africa could have different cultures seemed simply ridiculous. After all in order to even have a culture requires either the production of manufactured items that can differ from one group to another or complex social interactions, like a language, that again can show differences between groups. Chimpanzees, so the thinking went, neither made things nor did their various hoots and growls amount to anything more than simple alarums or warnings.

We’ve learned a lot since then and it all began when Jane Goodall was the first to observe a chimpanzee using a twig to get termites out of a nest in order to eat them. (See my posts of 11Nov17 and 21Mar18). This was the first ever observation of tool use by Chimpanzees but was quickly followed by numerous other observations of them using a range of tools. However, because Goodall concentrated all of her observations on a single-family group of chimpanzees she missed the fact that chimpanzees do things differently in different parts of Africa, that P troglodytes possessed culture.

The First Use of Tools by Chimpanzees was using a stick to ‘fish’ for termites (Credit: Seeker)

For example only the chimpanzees of West Africa use stone and wood as hammers in order to crack nuts while in central Africa chimps have been observed to use clubs to open up beehives. Other cultural differences include different styles of nest construction, chimpanzees make a new bed of leaves every night, along with behaviors such as stone piling and algae scooping.

Chimpanzee using a rock to break open a nut (Credit: Phys.Org)

In order to maintain a Culture of course you have to teach it to your Children (Credit: Earth in Transition)

Now researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) and the University of Warsaw have discovered a new ‘behavioral realm’, a new cultural unit located in the Bili-Uĕrĕ region of northern Democratic Republic of Congo. The area encompassed in this new ‘behavioral realm’ is estimated at some 50,000 square kilometers but could extend further. The announcement, in a paper published in the journal Folia Primatologica is the result of twelve years of study in the field; some discoveries take a long time and require a careful examination of the evidence.

The Area of the DR Congo where the New Chimpanzee Culture was discovered (Credit: Thurston C. Hicks et al)

Some of the differences are striking, such as whereas most chimp populations use twigs to ‘fish’ for the common termite Macrotermes muelleri, the Bili-Uĕrĕ chimps prefer to use stones and clubs to pound open the nests of the species Thoracotermes macrothorax. In fact the Bili-Uĕrĕ chimps seem to prefer pounding things in general, such as using stones on snail shells and even tortoises, behavior never before observed in chimpanzees. The scientists hope that by learning more about how chimpanzees develop their different cultures they may succeed in better understanding how it was that the first human cultures came into being.

Chimpanzees use a variety of different tolls for different jobs (Credit: Discover Magazine)

As exciting as this new discovery is there’s a danger here that has nothing whatsoever to do with the study of anthropology. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is currently mired in a bitter civil war that has taken the lives of tens of thousands of people. Yet even while the bloodshed continues there is a destructive exploitation of the jungle underway that threatens to exterminate the chimpanzees in Bili-Uĕrĕ even as their distinctive culture is being studied.

As co-author and director of the Department of Primatology at MPI-EVA Christophe Boesch put it. “It is great to have found these fascinating behavioral traits in this population. We simply hope that the many threats they face won’t wipe out these chimpanzees just as we are learning more about their uniqueness.”

 

Post Script: I’d like to update a story from just last week about the test mission of the Space X crew Dragon capsule. After five days attached to the International Space Station (ISS) the Dragon capsule undocked from the ISS and reentered Earth’s atmosphere, splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean about 450 km from the Cape Canaveral launch pad from which it had taken off six days earlier. While the reentry and splashdown appeared to go flawlessly NASA and Space X will still review all of the data over the next few months. Currently the plan is for the first actual manned mission to the ISS for the Dragon to take place in July. I’ll keep you up to date!

Splashdown of the Space X Crew Dragon Capsule (Credit: NASA)

 

Space News for March 2019.

There’s been quite a bit of news about space the past month so let’s get to it!

The big news of course in the successful launch of Space X’s manned version of their Dragon space capsule and its arrival at the International Space Station (ISS). Although in this final test the Dragon capsule is unmanned nevertheless this launch represents the first time that a human capable spacecraft has taken off from American soil since the last Shuttle flight back in 2011. Since that time all American astronauts have had to pay for a ride on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft in order to get to the ISS.

Launch of Space X’s Crew Dragon Capsule (Credit: Press TV)

The test schedule now calls for the Dragon capsule to remain docked with the ISS for several days before returning to Earth. When, and if the capsule reenters the atmosphere and splashes down in the Atlantic Ocean safely NASA and Space X will review the data from the mission before scheduling an actual manned mission later this year. Hopefully by early next year there will be regularly scheduled flights leaving Cape Canaveral for the ISS. Oh, I forgot to mention that once again Space X succeeded in recovering the rocket’s first stage so that it can be used again

The Dragon Capsule Docked at the ISS (Credit: NASA)

Astronauts about the ISS enter the Dragon Capsule (Credit: NASA)

And Space X isn’t alone in this effort; Boeing Corporation also has a human capable space capsule called the Starliner that is scheduled to conduct its unmanned test sometime in April. Both of these companies’ efforts are a part of NASA’s commercial crew program whose intention is to ‘hand off’ the transportation of cargo and personnel up to Low Earth Orbit (LOE) so that NASA can concentrate its efforts on human exploration beyond Earth orbit.

Boeing’s Starliner Capsule being readied from it’s test launch (Credit: Boeing)

With NASA helping to fund the development of both the Dragon and Starliner capsules the two commercial companies hope to find other customers as well. The possibilities of taking patrons to space hotels along with small countries who would like the recognition of putting an astronaut into orbit without the cost of building an entire launch system could be quite profitable. In the long term the commercialization of LOE could jumpstart space travel by lowering cost while increasing access.

 

Of course there’s some other space news as well. Staying with NASA for the moment the space agency has announced its plan for a return to a manned lunar landing by the year 2028. The first part of this plan will be to use the Space Launch System (SLS), now nearing completion, to construct a space station called Gateway in Lunar orbit. One piece of news is the announcement by the nation of Canada that it intends to participate in the construction of Gateway, to the tune of $150 million Canadian dollars per year.

Illustration of the Space Launch System (Credit: NASA)

The Gateway Lunar Orbiting Platform (Credit: Wikipedia)

During the time that Gateway is being built in Lunar orbit a reusable lander module will be developed. That way the Gateway station can serve as a ‘parking garage’ for the lander module with the SLS taking astronauts back and forth to Gateway.

For the moment NASA is asking for bids for a robotic Lunar Lander. Nine companies have been asked to submit bids under the new Commercial Lunar Payload Services or CLPS program. These unmanned landers will be designed to carry a number of different payloads, perhaps one day including supplies to a manned Moon base.

Draper Corp. proposed Lunar Lander for NASA’s CLPS program (Credit: Space News)

 

Finally, further out in space the Japanese probe Hayabusa 2 has successfully touched down on the asteroid Ryugu, you can’t call it a landing the asteroid’s gravity is too low. The asteroid is currently about 270 million kilometers from the Earth. The image below shows the shadow of Hayabusa 2 on the surface on Ryugu as it made it’s final approach.

Shadow of the Hayabusa 2 Probe against the surface of Ryugu (Credit: Universe Today)

Before making contact the probe shot a pinball-sized object at the asteroid in order to kick up a little dust for the space probe to study. Now the probe is on the surface and is preparing to take its first samples of the asteroid’s surface materials.

Artist’s Impression of Hayabusa 2 hovering above Ryugu (Credit: Astronomy.Com)

Two more landings, and sample collections are planned for Hayabusa before it begins its return trip in December of this year (2019). The material collected by Hayabusa is scheduled to arrive back at Earth just a year later in December 2020.

 

Space News for October 2018

The big news story this month has to be the launch failure of a manned Soyuz spacecraft on its way to the International Space Station (ISS). The launch took place from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on the 11th of October at about 0847 GMT but it was only a few minutes into the mission that the failure occurred. The image below shows the Russian Soyuz vehicle taking off before the trouble began.

Launch of the failed Soyuz Mission to the ISS (Credit: The Verge)

Thankfully the two-man crew, one Russian and one American, were able to escape from the failed rocket booster rocket and have been safely rescued. The bad news is until a thorough investigation of what went wrong is conducted the entire human race is without a means of putting anyone into outer space. The men on the ISS can return, they have their return Soyuz capsules already up there, but no replacements can go up to take their place.

At the moment there are few details as to the precise nature of the failure. So far it appears that the launch rocket’s second stage failed to separate from the first stage but it could be months before we learn exactly what happened. Ironically an astronaut already on the ISS was filming the launch from orbit and may have in fact have photographed the failure as it occurred. The image below is from that filming.

Soyuz Failure as seen from the ISS (Credit: BGR.com)

Both NASA and Roscosmos, the Russian space agency have already begun investigations but there is no way of telling how long they may take. Until both space agencies are convinced that they have found and fixed the problem the Soyuz is grounded, there will be no more manned space launches.

This disaster has been a possibility ever since NASA ended the Space Shuttle program seven years ago. In all of that time the US has been completely dependent on the Russians to take our astronauts back and forth to the ISS, at about $60 million dollars a ticket! Having only a single space system capable of manning the ISS, a single point of failure, is always a risky way to operate.

The immediate effect of the Soyuz failure on mission of the ISS is that two crewmembers will not be able to undertake their scheduled mission of staffing and maintaining the ISS, although NASA director James Brindenstine has announced that he still expects a December Soyuz launch to go forward. As to the long-term effect, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

 

Is there any other solution? Is there nothing we can do except wait for the Soyuz to be recertified for manned missions. Well an announcement by NASA just a few days before the Soyuz failure may point to the way forward.

For the past several years NASA has been funding Space X and Boeing in their development of manned capsules under the Commercial Crew Program (See my post of August 4th 2018 for the announcement of the planned first crews). Well NASA has just announced a tentative timetable for the first manned launches to take place from American soil since 2011.

Space X will conduct an unmanned test mission of their Dragon capsule in January of 2019 and if all goes well that will be followed by a manned mission to the ISS in June 2019. Boeing meanwhile will conduct its unmanned test launch of its Starliner capsule in March with a manned mission to the ISS in August.

Now before you say, that’s great, at most we won’t be able to send astronauts to the ISS for eight or nine months and after that we won’t even have to pay the Russians for a ride; that schedule is assuming everything goes according to plan. Also, the first missions to the ISS were intended to be for a one week stay only. Will NASA be prepared to risk a longer mission to the ISS with unproven spacecraft? That’s a very good question and I’ll wager that the engineers working on the commercial crew program, NASA, Space X and Boeing are very busy right now considering that option. The images below show Space X’s Dragon and Boeing’s Starliner capsules.

Boeings Starliner and Space X’s crewed Dragon Capsules (Credit: Space News)

Anyway you look at it the next the next year in manned spaceflight is going to be very eventful.

In the long term however there has also be some interesting news that may show us a glimpse of the future of manned space exploration. This week Lockheed Martin released its preliminary design for a reusable Moon lander that would take four astronauts from Lunar orbit to the surface and back to Lunar orbit after a week’s stay. The lander, see image below, would then be refueled in orbit for subsequent missions.

Lockheed Martin’s Preliminary Design for a reusable Moon Lander (Credit: Space News)

 

This idea of a reusable lander would be an extension of NASA plan for a space station in Lunar orbit known as the Lunar Gateway (See post of March 24th 2018 for more details).  In other words we’re taking about systems that won’t be ready for ten years at the very least so all of this is very preliminary!

It does seem as if, after several decades of going nowhere, the various space programs around the world are starting to find their way forward in the manned exploration of space.