TYB
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
Feb 2, 2024
NGC 1893 and the Tadpoles of IC 410
This cosmic view shows off an otherwise faint emission nebula IC 410, captured under clear Netherlands skies with telescope and narrowband filters. Above and right of center you can spot two remarkable inhabitants of the interstellar pond of gas and dust, known as the tadpoles of IC 410. Partly obscured by foreground dust, the nebula itself surrounds NGC 1893, a young galactic cluster of stars. Formed in the interstellar cloud a mere 4 million years ago, the intensely hot, bright cluster stars energize the glowing gas. Globules composed of denser cooler gas and dust, the tadpoles are around 10 light-years long and are likely sites of ongoing star formation. Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation their heads are outlined by bright ridges of ionized gas while their tails trail away from the cluster's central young stars. IC 410 and embedded NGC 1893 lie some 10,000 light-years away, toward the nebula-rich constellation Auriga.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html?
Japan's SLIM moon lander snaps final photos before going dormant during lunar night
Feb 1, 2024
Japan's historic SLIM moon lander has powered down ahead of a likely mission-ending cold lunar nighttime — but not before grabbing some final images and loads of science data.
SLIM, short for "Smart Lander for Investigating Moon," nailed its precision touchdown on the rim of Shioli crater on Jan. 19, despite engine troubles that saw it land nose-down. As a result, the spacecraft's solar cells face westward and are unable to receive the expected levels of sunlight, initially cutting operations on the lunar surface very short. But SLIM triumphantly reawakened nearly 10 days after landing, as the sun finally shone on its panels.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), which operates SLIM, has spent recent days scanning the nearby lunar surface with the spacecraft's Multi-Band Camera (MBC) to learn about its composition.
MBC is designed to scope out olivine and other minerals through analyzing the light signatures, or spectra, of reflected sunlight, according to the nonprofit Planetary Society.
JAXA's SLIM account on X, formerly Twitter, posted a final image taken by SLIM's navigation camera on Jan. 31 Japan time, while stating that the agency confirmed the spacecraft had entered a dormant state as expected.
JAXA will need to wait out the roughly 14.5-Earth-day-long lunar nighttime and then wait for favorable lighting and temperature conditions later in the next lunar daytime (which starts around Feb. 15) before SLIM can potentially be revived once more. For the probe to awake again, however, its electronics must hold up in the face of equatorial lunar nighttime temperatures of around minus 208 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 130 degrees Celsius).
But whether or not SLIM wakes up, the spacecraft has hit its full and extended mission goals by achieving a precision landing, deploying a pair of small rovers and demonstrating their interoperability, and obtaining a wealth of science data.
SLIM's X account also posted labeled images of targets of MBC's spectroscopic imaging, showing the various rocks and regolith that are being studied.
"Based on the large amount of data we have obtained, we are proceeding with analyses to identify rocks and estimate the chemical composition of minerals, which will help solve the mystery of the origin of the moon," a Google machine translation of a Feb. 1 JAXA statement read.
"We will announce scientific results as soon as they are obtained," the statement added.
https://www.space.com/japan-slim-moon-lander-dormant-final-photos
4 asteroids will zoom past Earth on Groundhog Day — including one the size of the Empire State Building
February 1, 2024 / 4:57 PM
Four asteroids will zoom past Earth on Friday — including one space rock as big as a skyscraper that will pass within 1.7 million miles of our planet, scientists say.
Don't worry: There's no chance of the big one hitting us, since it will pass seven times the distance from Earth to the moon.
NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies estimates the biggest asteroid headed our way is between 690 feet and 1,575 feet across. That means the asteroid could be similar in size to New York City's Empire State Building or Chicago's Willis Tower.
Discovered in 2008, the asteroid is designated as 2008 OS7. It won't be back our way again until 2032, but it will be a much more distant encounter, staying 45 million miles away.
The harmless flyby is one of several encounters this week. Three much smaller asteroids also will harmlessly buzz Earth on Friday, no more than tens of yards across, with another two on Saturday. On Sunday, an asteroid roughly half the size of 2008 0S7 will swing by, staying 4.5 million miles away.
NASA said Thursday that this January, 34,151 near-Earth asteroids have been detected – including 50 space rocks found that measured wider than one kilometer.
NASA said there have been 107 near-Earth asteroids that passed closer to the moon in the past 365 days – including seven in the last 30 days.
Last month, a small asteroid entered Earth's atmosphere and burned up as it hurtled through the skies above eastern Germany.
Last June, an astronomical observatory captured images of an asteroid flying "very close" to Earth and created a time-lapse of the event, showing the asteroid traveling at over 2,000 miles per hour.
NASA is also monitoring an asteroid that could collide with Earth on Valentine's Day in 2046. But the European Space Agency estimates that the asteroid has just a 1 in 607 chance of impacting our planet.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/asteroids-will-pass-earth-friday-one-the-size-of-empire-state-building/
X-ray image of universe reveals almost 1 million high-energy objects: 'These are mind-blowing numbers'
1 February 2024
The first data released to the public from the eROSITA sky survey comprises an X-ray view of half the sky over Earth, encompassing almost a million high-energy cosmic sources, including over 700,000 supermassive black holes.
This catalog, dubbed the "eROSITA All-Sky Survey Catalogue (eRASS1)" was published on Thursday (Feb. 1). It constitutes the largest-ever catalog of the universe's most powerful sources of energy, like exploding massive stars and black hole-powered active galactic nuclei that shine brightly in X-rays. The release also details the largest known structures in the universe — cosmic web filaments of hot gas that connect galaxies in clusters.
The results show that, in just half a year of operations beginning after launch on July 13, 2019, eROSITA has managed to discover more high-energy X-ray sources than has been found in six decades of examining the sky.
Considered a major milestone in the 60 or so years of X-ray astronomy, eRASS1 could help answer some of cosmology's biggest questions: How did the universe evolve, and why is the very fabric of space expanding at an accelerating rate?
Accompanying the eRASS1 data are almost 50 scientific papers published across a range of topics, adding to an existing 200 papers already written using data from the eROSITA telescope.
The main aim of eROSITA is to use clusters of galaxies to observe how dark energy accelerates the expansion of the universe; these 250 or so papers, however, demonstrate the extent to which the instrument and its data have gone beyond this goal.
These papers include the discovery of over 1,000 superclusters of galaxies, the revelation of two quasi-periodic erupting black holes, and the determination of the impact that stars' X-ray radiation has on water and atmosphere retention of planets that orbit them.
"The scientific breadth and impact of the survey is quite overwhelming; it's hard to put into a few words," spokesperson for the German eROSITA consortium, Mara Salvato, said in a statement. "But the papers published by the team will speak for themselves."
The eRASS1 data consists of eROSITA telescope observations conducted from Dec. 12, 2019, to June 11, 2020. from across half the sky over Earth. During this period, the space telescope detected around 170 million individual particles of X-ray light or "photons."
Processing these photons revealed 900,000 X-ray sources, of which 700,000 are feeding supermassive black holes that power quasars at the hearts of active galactic nuclei, regions in the centers of galaxies so bright they can outshine the combined light of every star in those galaxies themselves.
Also seen in the eRASS1 are 180,000 X-ray-emitting stars in the Milky Way, 12,000 clusters of galaxies and even exotic classes of X-ray sources like binary stars, supernova remnants, pulsars and other such objects.
"These are mind-blowing numbers for X-ray astronomy," Andrea Merloni, eROSITA principal investigator and first author of the eROSITA catalog paper, said in a statement. "We've detected more sources in 6 months than the big flagship missions XMM-Newton and Chandra have done in nearly 25 years of operation."
Along with the release, the eROSITA Consortium has also made available the software needed to analyze data from the X-ray telescope as well as catalogs that go beyond just X-ray data.
"We've made a huge effort to release high-quality data and software," eROSITA Operations team leader, Iriam Ramos-Ceja, said. "We hope this will broaden the base of scientists worldwide working with high-energy data and help push the frontiers of X-ray astronomy."
https://www.space.com/x-ray-astronomy-erosita-half-the-universe-high-energy-objects-black-holes
My skyscraper-to-giraffe-ometer is in the shop.
Thankfully this anon has it covered.
Tiny NASA Cameras to Picture Interaction Between Lander, Moon’s Surface
FEB 02, 2024
Say cheese, Moon. We’re coming in for a close-up.
As Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lander descends toward the Moon, four tiny NASA cameras will be trained on the lunar surface, collecting imagery of how the surface changes from interactions with the spacecraft’s engine plume.
Developed at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS) is an array of cameras placed around the base of a lunar lander to collect imagery during and after descent. Using a technique called stereo photogrammetry, researchers at Langley will use the overlapping images from the version of SCALPSS on Nova-C — SCALPSS 1.0 — to produce a 3D view of the surface.
These images of the Moon’s surface won’t just be a “gee-whiz” novelty. As trips to the Moon increase and the number of payloads touching down in proximity to one another grows, scientists and engineers need to be able to accurately predict the effects of landings.
How much will the surface change? As a lander comes down, what happens to the lunar soil, or regolith, it ejects? With limited data collected during descent and landing to date, SCALPSS will be the first dedicated instrument to measure plume-surface interaction on the Moon in real time and help to answer these questions.
“If we’re placing things – landers, habitats, etc. – near each other, we could be sand blasting what’s next to us, so that’s going to drive requirements on protecting those other assets on the surface, which could add mass, and that mass ripples through the architecture,” said Michelle Munk, principal investigator for SCALPSS and acting chief architect for NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. “It’s all part of an integrated engineering problem.”
Under Artemis, NASA intends to collaborate with commercial and international partners to establish the first long-term presence on the Moon. On this Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative delivery, SCALPSS 1.0 is purely focused on how the lander alters the surface of the Moon during landing. It will begin capturing imagery from before the time the lander’s plume begins interacting with the surface until after the landing is complete.
The final images will be gathered on a small onboard data storage unit before being sent to the lander for downlink back to Earth. The team will likely need at least a couple of months to process the images, verify the data, and generate the 3D digital elevation maps of the surface. The expected depression they reveal probably won’t be very deep — not this time, anyway.
“Even if you look at the old Apollo images — and the Apollo crewed landers were larger than these new robotic landers — you have to look really closely to see where the erosion took place,” said Rob Maddock, SCALPSS project manager at Langley. “We’re anticipating something on the order of centimeters deep — maybe an inch. It really depends on the landing site and how deep the regolith is and where the bedrock is.”
But this is a chance for researchers to see how well SCALPSS will work as the U.S. advances into a future where Human-Landing-Systems-class spacecraft will start making trips to the Moon.
“Those are going to be much larger than even Apollo. Those are pretty large engines, and they could conceivably dig some good holes,” said Maddock. “So that’s what we’re doing. We’re collecting data we can use to validate the models that are predicting what will happen.”
SCALPSS 1.1, which will feature two additional cameras, is scheduled to fly on another CLPS delivery — Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost — later this year. The extra cameras are optimized to take images at a higher altitude, prior to the expected onset of plume-surface interaction, and provide a more accurate before-and-after comparison.
SCALPSS 1.0 was funded by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate through the NASA-Provided Lunar Payloads Program. The SCALPSS 1.1 project is funded by the Space Technology Mission Directorate’s Game Changing Development Program.
NASA is working with several American companies to deliver science and technology to the lunar surface through the CLPS initiative.
These companies, ranging in size, bid on delivering payloads for NASA. This includes everything from payload integration and operations, to launching from Earth and landing on the surface of the Moon.
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/artemis/clps/tiny-nasa-cameras-to-picture-interaction-between-lander-moons-surface/
Congressional letter asks White House to reverse MSR spending cuts
February 1, 2024
More than 40 members of Congress from California have asked the White House to reverse cuts NASA has imposed on the Mars Sample Return (MSR) program, warning of job losses and a “decade of lost science.”
The Feb. 1 letter to Shalanda Young, director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, marks an escalation of an earlier request by many of the same members in November to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson to undo a slowdown in spending in MSR prompted by uncertainty in fiscal year 2024 appropriations.
The letter was led by Reps. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), with 41 other members of California’s congressional delegation signing it. The lead center for MSR, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is in California.
NASA officials said in November that it would “start ramping back on activities” related to MSR because of differences in spending bills. A House appropriations bill offers the agency’s full request of $949.3 million for MSR, but its Senate counterpart includes only $300 million.
NASA, like the rest of the federal government, is operating under a continuing resolution (CR) that funds the agency at 2023 levels, which for MSR is $822.3 million. NASA said the reduction in MSR spending was necessary because of concerns that, if the Senate bill is enacted, MSR could run out of 2024 funding if it spent at the higher 2023 rate for several months.
In the letter, the members of Congress rejected that argument. “This short-sighted and misguided decision will cost hundreds of jobs and a decade of lost science, and it flies in the face of Congressional authority,” they wrote.
Congress has yet to finalize a full-year 2024 spending package, but have made progress in recent weeks, such as providing allocations to the 12 appropriations subcommittees so they know how much money is available to them. The CR that funds NASA runs through March 8.
The letter hints at progress on resolving the difference between the House and Senate funding levels for MSR. “While we are extremely concerned that the Senate appropriations bill for Commerce, Justice, and Science has proposed just $300 million for the program in FY2024, House Appropriations Committee leadership continue to work closely with their colleagues in the Senate on a compromise position,” it states.
If the current reductions are not reversed, the letter warns, “this decision would ensure that JPL will not be able to meet the next launch window and will force the cancellation of billions of dollars in contracts as well as the termination of hundreds of highly skilled employees.”
The reductions have already had effects at JPL. The center laid off 100 contractors in early January, most of whom were involved on MSR. JPL cited uncertainty about the budget for 2024 as a key reason for the layoffs and other cost-cutting efforts.
“We got direction from NASA to plan for the lower level and we’re doing that systematically,” Laurie Leshin, director of JPL, said in a Jan. 8 interview. “So, the first thing to happen is to look at where we’re using on-site contractors on MSR, but other places as well, where JPLers could backfill for that.” Those layoffs could extend to full-time staff, she added, if MSR funding ended up closer to the figure in the Senate bill.
An added degree of uncertainty is the ongoing agency reassessment of the overall MSR architecture, prompted by an independent review that found the current approach to MSR is behind schedule and over budget. That effort is scheduled to be complete in March.
“It is our understanding that the modified mission architecture would simplify the program and reduce annual costs, thereby addressing the concerns expressed about MSR in the FY2024 Senate appropriations bill,” the letter states. NASA has not disclosed publicly any details about any potential alternative mission architectures.
https://spacenews.com/congressional-letter-asks-white-house-to-reverse-msr-spending-cuts/
https://chu.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/chu.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/02_01_2024-ca-congressional-delegation-letter-to-omb-on-mars-sample-return.pdf
Blue Origin touts capabilities of Blue Ring transfer vehicle
February 2, 2024
Blue Origin is highlighting the capabilities of an orbital transfer vehicle design it announced last year, including the ability of the spacecraft to serve as a fuel depot.
The company publicly announced last October its Blue Ring vehicle, which it described as providing a wide array of “in-space logistics and delivery” services from Earth orbit to cislunar space and beyond. The company had been hinting about development of a space tug for at least a year before the announcement.
That announcement provided few details about the technical capabilities of Blue Ring, but a company executive said there has been strong interest in the vehicle. “We’re bringing Blue Ring to market to do a lot of the missions that are starting to emerge from national security, civil and eventually commercial,” said Lars Hoffman, vice president of national security sales at Blue Origin, in a presentation at the SpaceCom conference here Feb. 1.
Blue Ring, he said, has 12 docking ports, each able to accommodate payloads weighing up to 500 kilograms. A top deck on the spacecraft can carry payloads weighing up to two and a half tons. The spacecraft offers 3,000 meters per second of delta V, or change in velocity, to maneuver to different orbits.
The “core mission” of Blue Ring is to deploy satellites in their desired orbits, but the spacecraft can also be used as a bus for hosted payloads. “We can serve as a very capable bus,” Hoffman said, with a design life of three to five years initially.
The ports on Blue Ring could be used to incorporate additional capabilities. One example he gave is robotic arms to support in-space servicing. “We absolutely see that as an extended capability.”
He added that Blue Ring is both refuelable and able to refuel other spacecraft, although he did not disclose the propellants the vehicle uses. “It can act as a refueling depot, if you will, where spacecraft can come up and plug in and fuel, or we can fly to a larger spacecraft and be the refueler of that spacecraft,” he said. “It’s quite possible for a Blue Ring to refuel a Blue Ring.”
“The flexibility of the vehicle is what really is its strength,” he argued. “It really is a multipurpose vehicle, and that’s the way we want to offer it.”
Blue Origin has not publicly disclosed any customers for Blue Ring or when the first vehicle will launch, but Hoffman said the company has been in talks with potential users, including during the conference. “We’d like to have more detailed discussions with potential customers. We had a lot at the conference this week.”
Blue Ring is the core of a new business unit at Blue Origin called In-Space Systems. The company, though, remains best known for its New Shepard suborbital vehicle and its New Glenn orbital launch vehicle under development.
Hoffman said the company continues to work towards a first launch of New Glenn later this year, but did not offer a more specific timeframe. Development of Launch Complex 36, which will host New Glenn launches at Cape Canaveral, is complete, he noted, and the company is working on ground tests of New Glenn hardware.
The company is also ramping up production of its BE-4 engines used both on New Glenn and United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur. Those engines “worked as advertised” on Vulcan’s inaugural launch Jan. 8, he said.
To help the company speed up production of BE-4 at a factory in Huntsville, Alabama, the company is using Marshall Space Flight Center’s Test Stand 4670, previously used to test engines for the Saturn 5 and Space Shuttle. The first BE-4 test from that stand took place Feb. 1, the company announced on social media. “That is going to help accelerate our delivery of those engines,” Hoffman said.
He also said the company will increase the flight rate of New Shepard. That vehicle performed a payload-only flight in December, the first since a launch mishap more than 15 months earlier. A crewed flight, the first since August 2022, will take place “very soon,” he said, but was not more specific.
Blue Origin has not disclosed how many New Shepard flights it plans for this year. “We are definitely getting back on track this year with New Shepard,” he said. “We want to get on a nice pace or rhythm here where we’re launching regularly, mostly astronaut flights but there will be payload flights mixed in there as well.”
He also echoed comments made by the company’s founder, Jeff Bezos, in December about speeding up the pace of activity at Blue Origin. “Blue gets dinged for moving slowly. I will say our pace is going to accelerate going forward,” he said. “But, taking that extra time up front is what leads to success on the first try.”
https://spacenews.com/blue-origin-touts-capabilities-of-blue-ring-transfer-vehicle/
Startups call for streamlined US regulations for emerging space capabilities
February 1, 2024
The United States risks taking a backseat in emerging space capabilities if regulations fail to catch up to industry progress, according to executives speaking here at the SpaceCom conference.
Federal agencies are taking great strides to modernize and streamline satellite licensing rules, CEOs of on-orbit refueling startup Orbit Fab and orbital surveillance venture True Anomaly said on a panel Jan. 31.
For instance, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration now processes commercial remote sensing licenses in weeks instead of months.
But more needs to be done to support nascent space businesses, said Daniel Faber and Even Rogers, who lead Orbit Fab and True Anomaly, respectively.
Orbit Fab has not had a bad experience with regulators so far for enabling its three test missions to date, Faber said, “but then we haven’t tried to execute a full rendezvous, [proximity operations] and docking maneuver yet.
“But we’re looking at a situation where a Swiss company builds a spacecraft in the U.K. and wants to dock with a U.S. spacecraft,” Faber continued, which is running up against U.S. export restrictions under ITAR, or International Traffic and Arms Regulations.
“There’s an exception in the ITAR rules for collaborative docking for NASA’s interface because at the time that was written that was the only one that they could imagine, he said. “That was 20 years ago, so these kinds of things need to be reviewed.”
Proximity operations are part of a foundation that would enable space business in addition to on-orbit refueling, according to Faber, who said U.S. companies will be held back if regulations prevent them from cooperating with the rest of the world.
“There are people pushing business models for recycling and reuse of equipment” in space, he said, “and all these things are going to come and they’ve got to be enabled, or they’re going to happen outside the U.S.”
A speedy and modernized licensing regime is also critical for giving the United States capabilities to tackle emerging space threats, True Anomaly’s Rogers said on the same panel.
It is getting easier to hide capabilities in orbit that could pose threats to the United States and its allies, Rogers warned.
He called for a regime that can quickly license rendezvous and proximity satellites for taking precise high-resolution imagery of orbital objects — such as the spacecraft True Anomaly is plotting — to improve the integrity of space domain awareness efforts. The blurred lines between commercial and defense applications for these capabilities are complicating these efforts, Rogers noted.
Meanwhile, Faber hopes voluntarily publishing flight paths and exit plans in case something goes wrong during a rendezvous and docking mission will help smooth the way with regulators.
“And we want to be getting third parties to be monitoring that,” he said, “and in fact we’ll pay third parties to monitor that just to set a good precedent.”
The Federal Communications Commission released a draft Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) Jan. 25 to set up a licensing framework for in-space servicing, assembly, and manufacturing activities.
If the NPRM passes an FCC vote Feb. 15, it will enter a public comment period lasting 45 days after publication in the Federal Register.
https://spacenews.com/startups-call-for-streamlined-us-regulations-for-emerging-space-capabilities/
CSO formally activates S4S, Schiess assumes command
Feb. 1, 2024
U.S. Space Force Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman presided over a ceremony along with Gen. Stephen N. Whiting, U.S. Space Command commander, formally activating U.S. Space Forces-Space Jan. 31.
S4S was established Dec. 6, 2023, when Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall redesignated Space Operations Command-West as S4S, a U.S. Space Force Component Field Command directly subordinate to the Chief of Space Operations for execution of the Secretary of the Air Force’s responsibilities under Title 10, U.S. Code for Service-specific administration and support functions.
“With the establishment of Space Forces-Space, Space Force commits to providing a cadre of space experts who will serve as a critical part of the Joint Force, support our allies, and enable our partners as we integrate space into our shared operations, activities and investments,” Saltzman said. “As a service component focused on mission operations, it will now take on the massive responsibility of ensuring its assigned Space Force forces generate the space effects needed by the nation to deter conflict and support national interests.”
Previously, Space Operations Command was assigned to U.S. Space Command as the Space Force service component. The service component responsibilities have been removed from Space Operations Command and realigned under S4S.
Following the activation, U.S. Space Force Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Schiess ceremonially assumed command of S4S although he has commanded the unit since its establishment last December.
“Today, the Space Force ceremoniously establishes Space Forces–Space, a single service component entrusted to support all space-based and terrestrial space-based operations, giving our global operations a combat edge,” Schiess said. “Here at S4S we must ‘Protect, Defend, and Deliver’ to ensure there is never a day without space for our Nation, Allies, and Partners.”
The activation of S4S ensures space forces are most efficiently presented to U.S. Space Command to best meet challenges presented by the dynamic national security environment and the return to great power competition.
“Our space capabilities, most of them operated by S4S, enable the joint force to communicate, navigate, derive intelligence, execute command and control and conduct military operations untethered to terrestrial networks,” said Whiting. “Space capabilities allow our joint force to be a truly global military able to see over the next hill and able to conduct operations anywhere on earth.”
S4S’s mission is to plan, integrate, conduct, and assess global space operations in order to deliver combat relevant space effects, in, from, and to space, for Combatant Commanders, Coalition partners, the Joint Force and the Nation.
“From this day forward, Space Forces-Space will enhance the security of our nation and our responsiveness across components,” Saltzman said. “That level of coordination will be invaluable because space has become more and more central to joint operations. We are better connected, more informed, more precise, and more lethal thanks to the space capabilities directed by this small and mighty team here at Vandenberg.”
https://www.spaceforce.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/3663695/cso-formally-activates-s4s-schiess-assumes-command/
Sierra Space unveils fully integrated Dream Chaser spaceplane amid testing campaign
February 2, 2024
An orbital-class spaceplane is one step closer to returning to the International Space Station. As part of an on-going test campaign, Sierra Space mated its Dream Chaser spaceplane to its Shooting Star module for the first time at NASA’s Neil Armstrong Test Facility in Sandusky, Ohio.
The spaceplane will be the third and final cargo spacecraft contracted by NASA to shuttle supplies and science experiments to the International Space Station as part of the Commercial Resupply Services 2 (CRS-2) contact. In 2016, Northrop Grumman, Sierra Space and SpaceX were awarded several flights each under the agreement that had a maximum value of $14 billion.
“It brings all of us at Sierra Space a great sense of pride and a profound reflection that what we are doing is truly important,” said Tom Vice, the CEO of Sierra Space. “The work we are doing will change everything and it will lay new footsteps for the next generation to follow.”
The company faced several years of development delays in getting Dream Chaser to this point. But recently, the spaceplane, dubbed ‘Tenacity,’ began its final slate of testing before it’s shipped down to Florida for launch.
“We are coming out of years of development, years of hard work, years of resolving really tough engineering challenges that come from revolutionizing the way we do things,” Vice said. “And we are really excited that this year we enter orbital operations for NASA. It is a year that we change how we connect Earth and space.”
Currently, Tenacity and its Shooting Star module are positioned on top of the shake table inside the NASA’s Mechanical Vibrations Facility at ATF. Jimmy Kenyon, the director of NASA’s Glenn Research Center in nearby Cleveland, Ohio, described it as “the world’s largest and highest capacity spacecraft shaker system.”
“This facility has been home to and has been responsible for critical mission testing of the Orion spacecraft as well as other vehicles, allowing us to understand the harsh flight environment before they actually go to the launchpad,” Kenyon said.
Since early January, Dream Chaser has been put through several shake tests, both horizontally and vertically, to simulate the vibrations from both launch and landing. A Sierra Space spokesperson said this phase of testing should wrap up in the next couple of days.
It will next be moved to the In-Space Propulsion Facility where it will undergo testing in environments that simulate the harshness of being on-orbit.
“We’re going to install the vehicle into the facility, we’re going to pump down the pressure and the temperature to the very low pressures and very low temperatures that the spacecraft will experience as it enters orbit,” Kenyon said. “And then, we’re going to use a dynamic heating element to go around and simulate the heating environment that would be experienced by the spacecraft due to the Sun, the solar heating while it’s there on orbit.”
There’s no set timeline for how long the next phase of testing will last, but Kenyon said the plan is to be able to ship the Dream Chaser and its Shooting Star module down to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a launch in the first half of the year.
The flight of the Dream Chaser Tenacity will mark the first of seven contracted cargo missions for Sierra Space to the ISS. On Thursday, Vice said Tenacity will be used to fly their first four flights while they work to bring their next spaceplane, dubbed ‘Reverence.’
“Dream Chaser was designed from the beginning to one, be highly reusable, highly reliable, focused around turning the vehicle quickly,” Vice said. “We’re going to learn a lot between the first and the second mission, still learning as we get into the third and fourth, but long term, it is our intent to turn the vehicle, get it flying and get it back up and service the customers.”
Vice said the vehicle is designed for 15 missions, but believes that it will be able to go well beyond that.
https://spaceflightnow.com/2024/02/02/sierra-space-unveils-fully-integrated-dream-chaser-spaceplane-amid-testing-campaign/
Cygnus Installed on Station; Cargo Ops Begin
February 1, 2024
Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft installation on the International Space Station is now complete. Cygnus, carrying over 8,200 pounds of cargo and science experiments. At 4:59 a.m., NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara, with NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli acting as backup, captured Cygnus using the International Space Station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm.
The mission launched at 12:07 p.m. EST Jan. 30 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
Cygnus will remain at the space station until May when it will depart the orbiting laboratory at which point it will harmlessly burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere.
https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/2024/02/01/cygnus-installed-on-station-cargo-ops-begin/