{"id":3511,"date":"2020-07-18T08:38:25","date_gmt":"2020-07-18T13:38:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/?p=3511"},"modified":"2020-07-18T08:38:27","modified_gmt":"2020-07-18T13:38:27","slug":"space-news-for-july-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/2020\/07\/18\/space-news-for-july-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Space News for July 2020."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There\nare a number of small items to discuss this month so let’s get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First of all, things continue to go smoothly for Space X’s first manned mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley have been on the ISS for more than a month now, assisting the regular crew in their maintenance and repair work. Bob Behnken even got to perform an EVA with his fellow American astronaut Chris Cassidy in order to replace a number of the station’s external batteries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Space X Dragon capsule attached to the ISS as photographed by astronaut Bob Behnken during his EVA. (Credit: Teslarati.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Although\nNASA has yet to announce exactly when Behnken and Hurley will return to Earth\nin their Dragon capsule they are probably about halfway through their mission.\nBefore they leave however NASA plans on conducting some kind of emergency\nstation test using the Space X Dragon capsule as a part of the test.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea is to pretend that a disaster to the ISS forces all five members of the crew, the three Americans plus two Russian cosmonauts, to use the Space X Dragon capsule as a lifeboat. Now the capsule will not actually undock from the ISS. It will however be quickly woken up and brought back to operational status. All five crewmembers will climb aboard the capsule and remain there for several hours, simulating a real emergency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The current five member crew of the ISS will participate in an emergency drill using the Dragon capsule as a potential lifeboat. (Credit: Positively Osceola)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Continuing with manned spaceflight NASA has announced the results of their analysis of the problems that occurred during the unmanned Orbital Test Flight (OFT) of Boeing’s Starliner capsule back in December 2020. During that flight a software problem occurred that caused the spacecraft to carry out the wrong maneuver, using up so much fuel that it was unable to rendezvous with the ISS. The capsule was able to return safely to Earth but an initial review of the mission revealed several other serious software issues that went unnoticed during the actual test flight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The launch and landing of the Boeing Starliner capsule went perfectly on its unmanned test flight. The problems all occurred in between! (Credit: Space.com) <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Based\nupon their review NASA engineers have made a total of 80 recommendations to\nBoeing that the aerospace firm must address before a second, unmanned OFT can\nbe conducted. Boeing hopes to implement the necessary changes quickly, in fact\nthe engineering effort is already well underway, with an eye towards a launch\ndate late this year for the second OFT. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That would allow Boeing to conduct their first manned flight with Starliner early next year. Once that flight has taken place the US will for the first time ever have two operational space systems for getting astronauts into orbit, both owned and operated by commercial corporations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In just a couple of years NASA hopes to have three capsules taking their astronauts into space. Here are Orion, Dragon and Starliner (CST-100) compared to the Apollo command module. (Credit: Quora)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

NASA also hopes that next year will see the first, unmanned test launch of the long awaited Space Launch System and Orion capsule, a launch vehicle that will not only take astronauts into Earth orbit but beyond. The SLS is in fact the foundation of NASA’s Artemis program with its ambitious goal of returning Americans to the Moon by the year 2024. Pieces of the first SLS rocket are finally, many years behind schedule starting to arrive at Cape Kennedy for assembly with an intention of the initial test launch of the whole rocket sometime in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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If SLS block 1 is ever completed, it’s already five years behind schedule, this is what it will look like on the launch pad. (Credit: NASA)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Artemis goal of putting Americans back on the Moon is more than just ambitious; it’s expensive. So when on July 7th the US House of Representatives Appropriations Committee released its funding bill for NASA it could only be considered disappointing. As announced the funding for NASA in 2021 will remain at exactly the same level as in the current fiscal year, $22.63 billion dollars. In other words there is no new money of any kind for Artemis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The House Appropriations Committee in action. With all of the money being directed to fight the Covid-19 pandemic there’s little desire to increase NASA’s budget. (Credit: LegBranch)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

That\nfigure of $22.63 billion is about $3 billion less than NASA requested and the\nworst part is that the monetary shortfall comes from the budget earmarked for\nthe design and development of a new lunar lander, the major piece of hardware\ncurrently not yet under construction. Now the budget bill has not yet been\npassed by congress, more money could be added before it is passed. And even if\nthe budget isn’t increased NASA could undoubtedly divert money from other\nprojects in an effort to keep making progress on the lander. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless\nthe Artemis schedule was very tight to begin with and without some real support\nin congress it is likely that a return to the Moon could, like all of NASA’s\nmanned deep space proposals over the last 30 years, be underfunded and delayed\nuntil it just dies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My final item for today deals not with NASA’s manned space efforts, but rather with its more successful robotic exploration probes. Back on the 6th of January in 2017 I posted an article about a couple of new NASA missions intended to explore several of the asteroids orbiting the Sun in the belt between Mars and Jupiter. One of these missions is called Psyche after the metal rich asteroid that is its target.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just this month the engineering team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory designing Psyche completed their work and the final design has been approved. This means that work on the spacecraft’s hardware can begin with full assembly and testing to begin in February of 2021. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The design phase of the Psyche space probe is completed but the spacecraft must be built quickly if it is to launch in 2022. (Credit: MarketWatch)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The\nschedule for Psyche is tight. The spacecraft must be launched in August of 2022\nif it is to use a gravity assist from Mars in order to reach its target.\nArrival at Psyche will then be in early 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are a number of small items to discuss this month so let’s get started. First of all, things continue to go smoothly for Space X’s first manned mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley have been on the ISS for more than a month now, assisting the regular … Continue reading “Space News for July 2020.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[494,1163,1162,1161,885],"class_list":["post-3511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","tag-boeing-starliner","tag-nasa-artemis-program","tag-nasa-psyche-space-probe","tag-space-news-july-2020","tag-space-x-crew-dragon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3511"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3521,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3511\/revisions\/3521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}