Space News for January 2021.

It’s the start of a brand new year and unfortunately 2021 is not off to a good start for space exploration. Two stories in particular illustrate the difficulties that often arise whenever we try to do something for the first time.

One story that didn’t get a lot of coverage but is nevertheless a big disappointment concerned NASA’s Insight Mars Lander. Insight touched down on the Martian surface almost two years ago, on the 26th of November 2018 with big hopes for discovering a great deal about conditions on the Red Planet. Insight was equipped with numerous instruments for observing the Martian weather and seismic activity, that is Marsquakes. The showpiece of the mission however was a robotic arm with a drill, known as the ‘Mole’, which it was hoped would drill down three meters into the Martian soil.

NASA’s Insight lander. The failed drill, the ‘Mole’ is foreground right while the seismograph is foreground left. (Credit: ABC News)

There were problems right from the start. As described by NASA engineers the Martian soil had an ‘unexpected tendency to clump’. Because of this the lander’s drill never got the leverage it needed to penetrate down more than a few centimetres despite the engineers trying every trick they could think of. The last attempt was made on January 9th to no avail. With no prospect of a successful resolution the Insight program managers have decided to cancel any further efforts.

But that doesn’t mean that the Insight lander is a total failure, its seismograph has already detected several Marsquakes and should continue working until at least the end of 2022. And once NASA’s Perseverance rover lands on Mars on the 18th of February NASA plans to use the weather instruments on the two spacecraft to establish the first ever weather network on another planet.

NASA’s Perseverance rover and it’s main scientific instruments. Perseverance will join the Curiosity rover on the Martian surface next month! (Credit: NASA Mars Exploration Program)

The big news however comes from back here on planet Earth where NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) suffered a ‘Major Component Failure’ during a critical ‘Hot Fire Test’ of its first stage on the 16th of January. The SLS, whose main contractor is Boeing corporation, is the big rocket launch vehicle that is the foundation of NASA’s Artemis program with a goal of returning American astronauts to the Moon in the next half dozen years or so. NASA has already spent $18 billion over the last ten years on development of the SLS and the program is more than three years behind schedule.

Ignition of the ‘Hot Fire’ test of the first stage of the Space Launch System (SLS). (Credit: SpaceNews)

The hot fire test, performed at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, was intended to be the last test of the SLS’s first stage prior to its being sent to the Kennedy Space Center. Once at Kennedy the rocket will be assembled with its upper stages and the Orion crew capsule in preparation for a first, unmanned lunar mission scheduled for sometime late this year. The plan of the test at Stennis was to completely fuel the first stage and, after clamping the rocket tight to the facility’s B-2 test stand, ignite the four main RS-25 engines, the same engines that powered the space shuttle. The length of the test was designed so that the engines would carry out an entire launch profile, about eight minutes firing.

At this moment all four first stage engines are firing perfectly. (Credit: SpaceFlight Insider)

For the first minute everything was proceeding well, the engines where producing 109% of nominal thrust and preparing to throttle down to 95% when a flash of light was seen near the thermal protection blanket on engine number 4. These blankets are designed to prevent engine parts from overheating due to the exhaust of the other three engines. Seconds later the rocket’s on-board computer system detected an as yet unknown fault and the computer ordered all four engines to shut down. The entire test lasted only 67 seconds.

While the post mortem is just underway and the precise cause of the shutdown still unknown the fact is that the test fell far short of a success and at the very least will have to be repeated. That means at least another month’s delay along with its associated cost on a program that is way over budget and behind schedule. And if it should turn out that there is a real design flaw that would certainly kill any chance of a launch later this year.

So far the SLS has gotten plenty of press coverage but the question is when will it finally launch! (Credit: Autoevolution)

Also, the multiple delays and cost overruns of the SLS are causing some members of Congress and even scientists at NASA to question the entire Artemis program given its dependence on an SLS that seems to be going nowhere. NASA has already spent $18 billion on the SLS along with another $18 billion on the Orion Space Capsule that will carry the astronauts to the Moon and back. Will we ever actually see a mission performed with those two very expensive pieces of equipment? Not at the rate we’re going.

The Orion capsule has cost as much as the SLS but at least it’s ready to go! Without a launch vehicle however it’s going nowhere fast. (Credit: Space.com)

And there is one last piece of bad news, for Boeing at least. In funding NASA’s Europa Clipper robotic space probe to that icy moon of Jupiter Congress had mandated that the launch vehicle for the space probe had to be the SLS. Well in NASA’s 2021 fiscal budget there was a slight change in those orders to only require that the SLS be used ‘if available’.

Now the Europa Clipper isn’t scheduled to launch until the mid-2020’s so the rocket’s current problems will hopefully be solved by then. Nevertheless the SLS will still be very costly and presumably every rocket will be needed for Artemis. In fact a cost analysis by NASA has indicated that if the Clipper were to be launched by the Space X Falcon Heavy it could save the space agency $1.5 billion!

Space X’s Falcon Heavy has only had one launch so far but it’s ready to start launching heavy space probes like the Europa Clipper. (Credit: SpaceNews)

Maybe for once the officials at both NASA and in Congress will do the right thing. The Space Launch System may be necessary to get us back to the Moon this decade but any attempt to use it in other space missions would simply be tossing good money after bad.

I’ll end today with a bit of administrative news. With the end of the Trump administration NASA director Jim Bridenstine has tendered his resignation and been temporarily replace by his deputy Steve Jurczyk until the position can be permanently filled. Although Bridenstine did a better job of running the space agency than I’d expected (feared?) nevertheless he was a politician taking a job that had always gone to a scientist.

NASA’s Deputy Administrator Steve Jurczyk has been chosen by President Biden as a temporary Director. With a long history of working for the space agency he might be a good choice for permanent director. (Credit: NASA)

Hopefully the new Biden administration’s choice for NASA director will return to the idea of science over politics. It’s worth noting that two decorations that President Biden has chosen for the oval office are a portrait of America’s founding scientist Ben Franklin and a Moon rock. Our new President certainly wants to promote truth and science over lies and conspiracy theories and that can only be a good thing!

Space News for September 2017

A lot happened this past month in outer space. Of course the biggest story in September was the end of the Cassini mission to Saturn as the spacecraft plunged into the planet’s atmosphere. I’ve already talked about that however (See post of 13Sept17), so in today’s post I’ll be talking about several other items of interest.

The first story I’m going to discuss also concerns one of NASA’s interplanetary space probes. The Osiris-Ex mission is an ambitious attempt to land on the asteroid Bennu, collect a sample and return that sample to Earth. The picture below shows an illustration of the Osiris-Ex probe hovering above Bennu taking a sample.

Osiris-Ex Probe (Credit: NASA)

The Osiris-Ex spacecraft was launched last year and placed on a trajectory that initially took it closer to the Sun. That orbit was designed to bring the probe back around for a gravity-assisting flyby of Earth. On 22Sept17 the spacecraft flew 17,500 km over Antarctica not only boosting its velocity by 3.7 kilometers per second but altering the plane of its orbit around the Sun to match that of Bennu.

The Earth flyby was accomplished without a hitch and as it moved past our planet the spacecraft took several pictures of Earth, one of which is shown below. Osiris-Ex is now expected to reach Bennu in October of 2018. Once in orbit around Bennu the probe will spend two years mapped and examining the asteroid with a variety of instruments before reaching out with a robotic arm to try to grab a sample of as much as two kilos of material from Bennu. The spacecraft will then leave Bennu for a return to Earth carrying that material. The expected arrival date for the sample is September of 2023.

Earth as seen by Osiris-Ex (Credit: NASA)

Long range planning is key to the success of any space endeavor. With that in mind Lockheed-Martin Corporation (known in the aerospace industry as Lock-Mart) has published some details and illustrations of their ideas for a Mars Base Camp program. Lock-Mart’s plan calls for a space station to be built in orbit around Mars which can then be visited by astronauts from Earth. Four of the astronauts can then take two week long excursions down to the Martian surface using a single stage Mars Assent / Descent Vehicle (MADV). The illustration below shows what the Mars station could look like in orbit around the red planet.

Proposed Mars Base Camp (Credit: Lockheed Martin)

The MADV lander is intended to land on the Martian surface using the supersonic retropropulsion technique that Space-X Corporation has developed to land their Falcon-9 rockets for reuse. The illustration below shows the MADV sitting upright on the surface of Mars.

Proposed Mars Assent / Decent Vehicle (Credit: Lockheed Martin)

Perhaps the thing I like best about Lock-Mart’s scheme is how it looks and feels so similar to the hardware Andy Weir described in his novel “The Martian”

Another important news item this month concerns President Trump’s finally making his choice for a new director of NASA. This month Trump chose Oklahoma Congressmen James Bridenstine for the job. Now Trump’s choice is controversial for several reasons first and foremost of which is the fact that, unlike every NASA director since the agency’s founding, Bridenstine has no background in either science or engineering. The picture below is of Congressman Bridenstine.

James Bridenstine, official portrait from US House of Representatives

The congressman is also well known for several opinions that have put him at odds with the majority of the scientific community. The most notable of these is global warming with Bridenstine being a consistent climate change denier.

On the other hand Bridenstine is a strong supporter of human exploration of space. He also is on record as preferring a return to the Moon before going on to Mars, a position I have advocated in several posts (22Feb17 and 19July17). Bridenstine is also a strong supporter of the commercialization of space by companies such as Space X and Orbital Science.

Only time will tell whether Congressman Bridenstine turns out to be a good choice for NASA. More than anything else NASA needs a coherent long term goal, and then to stick to that goal. I’m actually more concerned about the incoherence of Bridenstine’s future boss than I am about Bridenstine.

My final item is also more political than anything else. After the successful cooperation between the US and Russia in the building and operation of the International Space Station the two nations have agreed this past week to cooperate on the construction of a space station in lunar orbit, the Deep Space Gateway project. The picture below shows what the Deep Space Gateway project could look like.

Proposed Deep Space Gateway (Credit: NASA)

If that concept sounds familiar well of course its really the same plan as the one from Lock-Mart we discussed above for Mars. I suppose the idea is to take human exploration one step at a time, using the knowledge and technology gained in the last step to ensure the success of the next step. That could all be for the best but we will still need definite goals and a firm commitment from those who hold the purse strings if we’re going to finally return to truly exploring outer space.