Exploring Space, For All Mankind

Virgin Galactic reaches space after historic test flight. (December 13, 2018).

For the first time since the final space shuttle mission launched in 2011, U.S. astronauts reached space from American soil earlier today with the most recent test flight of Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity.

Carried to an altitude of 13,100 meters by the VMS Eve mothership, Unity burned its single engine for the longest duration in its test program. The 60-second burn propelled the vehicle to a top speed of Mach 2.9 and an altitude of 83 kilometers, just above the 80 kilometer boundary of space recognized by the Federal Aviation Administration.

VSS Unity was piloted by four time shuttle astronaut and Virgin Galactic pilot Rick ‘CJ’ Sturckow and copilot Mark Stucky. The VMS EVE/Unity duo took off at 10:10am EST, with SpaceShipTwo dropping at 10:59AM and infighting its rocket motor. The pilots landed the Unity back at the Mojave spaceport at 11:14am, fifteen minutes after their powered flight began.

‘Space is Virgin territory’

Following the vehicle’s touchdown and debarkation of the pilots, Virgin founder Richard Branson stated: “Today, for the first time in history, a crewed spaceship, built to carry private passengers, reached space. Today we completed our first revenue-generating flight and our pilots earned their commercial astronaut wings. Today, we have shown that Virgin Galactic really can open space to change the world for good. Space is Virgin territory!”

Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson reacting to the announcement that the VSS Unity reached the boundary of space December 13, 2018. Credit: Virgin Galactic.

Today’s flight fulfills a statement Branson made to CNN Business last week that Virgin Galactic would fly people in space by Christmas. It also is the culmination of fourteen years of work Branson and his affiliates have put into SpaceShipTwo since its predecessor, SpaceShipOne, won the Ansari X-prize to become the first commercial spacecraft to reach space in 2004.

Launching tourists and experiments over satellites.

Commercial space transportation companies such as SpaceX and Boeing have been developing orbital spacecraft that would launch astronauts to Low Earth orbit and the International Space Station as part of the Commercial Crew program.

Virgin Galactic is not participating in that program, but aims to transport paying customers on a brief suborbital flight providing stunning views of the Earth’s curvature and up to four minutes of weightlessness.

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is the closest direct competitor to Virgin’s space tourism endeavors with their New Shepard rocket, which has completed nine successful test flights in the past three years.

There has been a growing movement in the aerospace industry the last few months to redefine the boundary of space by altering the Karman line - the current, 100-kilometer boundary of space defined by theoretical physicist Theodore von Karman in 1956.

Analyses published by various astronomers and scientists argue that the conditions which affect a spacecraft’s flight, orbit, and operation begin at 80 kilometers in altitude, not 100.

Branson reaffirmed the company’s victory following this morning’s test flight by stating ’space is Virgin territory.’

While operational SpaceShipTwo flights will include up to six paying passengers, today’s flight included four scientific payloads as part of NASA’s Flight Opportunities program.

The experiments measured the effects of microgravity on dust collisions, multi-phase flow systems, plant growth, and vibration isolation systems.

P/c: Virgin Galactic

KSLV-II TLV flight validates South Korean rocket engine for future launch vehicle. (November 29, 2018)

South Korea became the 11th country in the world yesterday to successfully develop and test an indigenously-made liquid fueled rocket engine. The Korea Aerospace Research Institute launched a test version of the KSLV-II rocket from the Naro spaceport November 28 in order to validate the design of the KRE-075 engine during flight conditions.

Powered by a single, 75-ton force KRE-075 vacuum engine, the 25.8 meter tall test vehicle represented the second stage of the three-stage KSLV-II rocket still in development. The vehicle’s upper stage was a dummy and not operational during the mission. Liftoff occurred at 4pm Korean Standard Time (2am EST) from the Naro Space Center on the country’s southern coast.

Burning for 151 seconds, the KRE-075 engine placed the vehicle in a suborbital trajectory southward over the East China Sea, reaching an apogee of 209 kilometers 319 seconds after liftoff. KARI reported the test vehicle safely impacted the ocean 429 kilometers downrange from the launch site.

This marked the first test of the combined engine and second stage systems during flight conditions. Engineers have conducted over 100 ground tests of the engine prior to Wednesday’s flight.

Development of a domestic satellite launch vehicle has been a goal for South Korea for decades but political pressures from the United States have hindered development of the technology due to its similarities with ballistic missile technology.

South Korean engineers began development of KSLV-II following the country’s first successful domestic satellite launch in 2013. That payload was launched by the Naro-1 vehicle, a joint South Korean-Russian rocket derived from the Angara rocket’s core stage.

Following yesterday’s test, KARI will push towards a full-stack test flight of the complete vehicle by 2021. When operational, KSLV-II is expected to deliver up to 1.5 tons to low Earth orbit.

Watch replays of the launch from multiple angles via KARI:

A video showing the rocket’s final assembly, rollout, and launch can be seen below.

P/c: Korean Aerospace Research Institute.

Japanese Billionaire purchases SpaceX colonial ship for circumlunar art project. (September 16, 2018)

Two years after the company announced that a private individual bought a Crew Dragon flight to the moon, SpaceX founder and chief designer Elon Musk revealed their identity Monday night, September 16.

In a press conference held at the company’s Hawthorne, California headquarters, surrounded by newly-constructed Falcon 9 rockets, Musk announced that 42-year old Japanese Billionaire Yusaku Maezawa bought an entire BFR spaceship for a circumlunar mission slated to launch no earlier than 2023.

Maezawa - a 42-year old art collector and founder of Japan’s largest online fashion retail site - booked the flight as part of his #dearMoon project, which was also revealed at Monday night’s conference. “Ever since I was a kid, I have loved the moon. Just staring at the moon filled my imagination. It’s always there and has continued to inspire humanity. That is why I could not pass up this opportunity to see the moon up-close.”

#dearMoon

However, Maezawa does not plan on travelling to cislunar space alone - he intends on taking up to eight artists on a trip that aims to “inspire the dreamers in all of us.”

“What if Picasso had gone to the moon, or Andy Warhol, or Michael Jackson, or John Lennon, or Coco Chanel. There are so many artists with us today that I wish would create amazing works of art for humankind, for children of the next generation. And I wish very much that such artists could go to space, and see the moon up close and the Earth in full view and create works that reflect their experience.

#dearMoon aims to send up to eight artists as Maezawa’s guests on a six-day voyage around the moon. “These artists will be asked to create something after their return to Earth and these masterpieces will inspire the dreamer within all of us” Maezawa stated.

The billionaire entrepreneur had not decided on the specific amount of artists or the fields they will represent, but an accompanying promotional video for the project stated that they will “represent Earth” from various fields. These could include “painters, sculptors, photographers, musicians, film directors, fashion designers, architects, etc.”

Maezawa’s inspiration for the project stemmed from imagining his favourite painter - Jean-Michel Basquait, and the works he could have created had he seen the Moon up close.

Referencing pop culture and music references ranging from Beethoven to Van Gogh and the Beetles, Maezawa stated that the moon has inspired countless works throughout the ages. “And with utmost love and respect for the moon, our planet’s constant partner, I named this project #dearMoon.”

This will not be the first time that prominent Earth artists have come together to create lunar-inspired artwork. Although the artists themselves never left the planet, miniature facsimile copies of works created by Andy Warhol, Forrest Myers, Robert Rauschenberg and others were secretly installed by a Grumman employee on the Apollo 12 lunar module in 1969. The ‘Moon Museum’ - a ceramic wafter less than an inch in size hidden under the gold foil of the Lunar Module’s descent stage - was not disclosed publicly until the mission was already returning to the Earth following their lunar landing.

From the Earth to the Moon.

According to graphics presented at the press conference, Maezawa’s flight would last just under six days from launch to landing. The Big Falcon Spaceship would fly on a “free-return” trajectory around the moon, a flight profile which craft loop around the moon without entering orbit and return to Earth.

Lunar gravity would maneuver the spacecraft in such a way that additional course corrections would not be necessary, providing the safest flight profile for a flyby.

Apollo 13 flew a modified free-return trajectory following the explosion of an oxygen tank aboard the spacecraft in April, 1970.

According to a SpaceX tweet late Monday evening, the company is expecting the BFS to fly as close as 125 miles to the Lunar surface.

During a question and answer session immediately following the announcement, Elon Musk stated that the projected 2023 launch date is not set in stone. “This is a ridiculously big rocket. It’s got so much advanced technology. It’s not 100% certain that we succeed in getting this to flight.”

By comparison, the inaugural flight of the Falcon Heavy rocket was slated for late mid-2014 before slipping to the right nearly four years to February 2018.

Monday’s announcement also confirmed that Maezawa initially intended to perform the mission on the company’s Crew Dragon vehicle atop a Falcon Heavy rocket. SpaceX announced in February, 2017 that an unnamed individual paid a deposit for the flight, which was initially scheduled to launch in late 2018.

Immediately following Falcon Heavy’s test flight in February, 2018, SpaceX stated that the rocket was no longer being human-rated, putting the future of the mission in doubt until last week.

Musk stated Monday that after modifying the capsule for deep space flight and circumlunar operations, there would only have been enough room for Maezawa and one additional person, not enough to fulfill the host’s desire for a variety of artists.

“If in doubt, go with Tintin.”

Monday’s announcement also presented the third variation of Musk’s Big Falcon Rocket since it was announced at the 2016 IAC in Guadalajara, Mexico.

The recent modifications reflect additional design work by the SpaceX teams to make the spaceship more aerodynamically stable during atmospheric landings and surface operations.

Whereas the previous versions of the Big Falcon Spaceship resembled a cylinder with two small delta wings, the new design features three equally-sized wings equidistant around the vehicles aft section. Two of the wings would be actuated control surfaces that would change orientation during various parts of planetary atmospheric entry. The third, according to Musk “is just a leg…it doesn’t serve any aerodynamic purpose.”

Two smaller fins near the nose of the ship actuate in tandem with the larger fins for further stability.

The design resembles the interplanetary ships of mid 20th-century science fiction, including the rocket from Belgian cartoonist Herge’s famous Tintin series. Musk even stated during the conference that he wanted to bias the BFR design towards the famous cartoon ship: “I love the Tintin rocket design. If in doubt, go with Tintin.”

Although Musk declined to comment on the amount of Maezawa’s deposit for the BFR circumlunar flight, he did state that “it will have a material effect on paying for the development” of the BFR system. Currently, only around 5% of SpaceX resources are spent on BFR, though Musk expects that to “change quite significantly in the years to come.”

He reiterated that the company’s top priorities are still NASA missions to the space station and commercial launches using the smaller Falcon 9 vehicle. The final major version of that rocket, the Block 5, made its first flight earlier in 2018. Once Crew Dragon flights begin on a regular basis - Musk did not state a specific time but likely to be in early 2019 - the company will shift their engineering talent more fully towards BFR.

Musk also showed images of the BFR test article, including a cylindrical segment constructed at the company’s recently-purchased facility at the Port of Los Angeles.

Watch the introductory video for #dearMoon below. Click here for a replay of SpaceX’s press conference introducing Maezawa and #dearMoon

P/c: SpaceX/#dearMoon

Mission 9 - New Shepard proves high-altitude abort capability. (July 18, 2018)

Pushing the limits of the crew capsule’s escape system, Blue Origin’s ninth test flight of their New Shepard rocket occurred July 18 from Van Horn, Texas.

After a flawless liftoff at 11:11am EDT, New Shepard began its nominal launch profile, firing its single BE-3 engine for 2 minutes and 23 seconds. Twenty seconds following separation of the crew capsule from the propulsion module, the capsule’s escape motor was fired to simulate a high-altitude abort.

A previous test of the escape motor as part of Mission 5 on October 5, 2016, demonstrated the capsule’s abort capability during max-Q, the portion of launch where aerodynamic stress upon the vehicle is the greatest. Yesterday’s flight proved that the escape system could also work in the vacuum of space near the apogee of the vehicle’s flight profile.

Blue Origin reported after the flight that the capsule reached a maximum altitude of 118.8 kilometers, setting a new altitude record for the program. Each consecutive New Shepard flight has broken their altitude records.

Seven minutes and 25 seconds after liftoff, the propulsion module landed on its landing pad, with the crew capsule softly parachuting to earth nearly four minutes later. Both modules were making their third voyage into space.

Blue Origin’s head of Astronaut Strategy and Sales Ariane Cornell stated that Mission 10, New Shepard’s next test flight, will feature “finished customer interiors” in the crew capsule, paving the way towards crewed test flight in late 2018 or early 2019.

Mission 9 also carried eight experiments from universities and space organizations around the globe, some as reflights of payloads previously launched on New Shepard. Beginning with Mission 7 in December, 2017, Blue Origin began flying payloads on the suborbital rocket. In addition to these commercial payloads, Blue Origin’s astronaut simulator, Mannequin Skywalker, also made his third voyage into space, further validating the capsule’s design for future human occupants.

Check out our New Shepard archive by clicking here. Blue Origin’s webcast of Mission 9 can be viewed below.

S.S. J.R. Thompson launches towards space station on OA-9 mission.

Orbital ATK successfully launched their ninth contracted cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station earlier this morning with a predawn liftoff from Wallops Island, Virginia. 

The Antares 230 launch vehicle lifted off from Pad 0A at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at 4:44am EDT. After nine minutes of powered flight, the Cygnus spacecraft reached orbit with 7,400 pounds of cargo. 

Among the items being delivered to the space station is an experiment by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory called the Cold Atom Laboratory, which will attempt to cool an atom to just a billionth of a degree above absolute zero, the absolute coldest that an object could be. Also launched was an experiment to monitor the behavior of concrete in microgravity which could help engineers construct more resilient planetary habitats.

Sixteen bread loaf-sized cubists were launched, ten for transfer to the ISS for deployment and six for launch from Cygnus itself following the end of its resupply run in July.

Cygnus will arrive at the orbiting laboratory at 5:20am Thursday morning to begin a nearly two-month stay. Towards the end of its mission, Cygnus will perform a reboot maneuver to boost the space station into a higher orbit. This will be the first time a commercial cargo vehicle will boost the laboratory; currently, only Russian Progress freighters have the ability to boost the station.

Click here for all our Antares and Cygnus mission coverages.

Check out more updates on the OA-9 mission via Orbital ATK by clicking here.

P/c: NASA

Mission 8 - Blue Origin pushes envelope on first New Shepard flight of 2018. - April 30, 2018

Blue Origin’s New Shepard test program completed its eighth flight Sunday afternoon, April 29, bringing the company one step closer to flying tourists into suborbit.

Thunderstorms in the vicinity of the Van Horn, Texas launch site postponed the launch by over an hour, with New Shepard finally lifting off at 12:06pm CDT. Two minutes and 16 seconds later, the single Hydrogen-fueled BE-3 engine cut off, beginning a four-minute phase of weightlessness for the capsule.

Twenty seconds after MECO, the uncrewed capsule separated from the propulsion module and coasted to a maximum altitude of over 107 kilometers, or 351,000 feet.

Blue Origin stated ahead of the flight that Mission 8 would ‘push the envelope’ for the New Shepard system in order to increase the operational altitude for the spacecraft. Sunday’s flight was nearly 20,000 feet higher than previous New Shepard missions and a full seven kilometers above the Kármán Line, the internationally-recognized boundary of space.

Founder Jeff Bezos tweeted after the mission that ‘this is the altitude we’ve been targeting for operations.’

Following apogee, the dual spacecraft began their descent to Earth, with the booster landing under its own power seven minutes after liftoff and the capsule under three parachute canopies three minutes later.

Sunday’s flight carried the astronaut test-dummy dubbed ‘Mannequin Skywalker’, which first flew on Mission 7 in December. Multiple science experiments were also carried in the capsule for NASA, the German space agency DLR, and private companies.

NASA’s payload monitored cabin conditions before, during, and after flight, the DLR-sponsored experiments provided by German universities studied biology and physics, and a private company called SolStar tested technology to eventually provide in-space Wi-Fi to travelers.

Although Blue Origin has not provided a detailed timeline for the remainder of the New Shepard program, the company expects to begin regular passenger operations by early 2019, with a crewed test flight by the end of this year,

P/c: Blue Origin.

Click here to see our coverage of Blue Origin’s New Shepard test flight program.

T-97 days - Parker Solar Probe’s Delta IV Heavy erected for testing (April 24, 2018.)

With just over 3 months to launch, the Delta IV Heavy launch vehicle that will propel the Parker Solar Probe to the sun was raised at LC-37 April 24 to begin its preflight Wet Dress Rehearsal. NASA requires all missions to other planets or solar system bodies to perform a WDR in order to eliminate any potential issues with the launch vehicle.

The three-core booster is currently the most powerful rocket in ULA’s launcher fleet, and was recently dethroned by the Falcon Heavy as the world’s most powerful rocket.

Following the WDR, rocket’s second stage and encapsulated spacecraft will be integrated a few weeks before launch in mid-July.Parker Solar Probe will launch at 4am EDT on July 31, 2018. Flying within 3.8 million miles of the solar ‘surface’, the photosphere, PSP will be the first spacecraft to fly within the outer limits of the sun’s atmosphere. 

Parker Solar Probe will become the fastest spacecraft ever launched by humanity, reaching speeds of over 430,000 miles per hour. By comparison, NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto is the fastest spacecraft, attaining a launch velocity of over 36,300 miles per hour.

P/c: NASA/John Hopkins

T-10 days - InSight spacecraft installed atop Atlas V rocket ahead of launch.

The first-ever interplanetary mission from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California is a step closer to launch this week as ULA technicians completed critical steps in the launch campaign.

On Sunday, April 22, ULA completed a Wet Dress Rehearsal simulating the entire seven-hour countdown of the vehicle. NASA requires all planetary science missions to go through a WDR in order to eliminate any potential issues in the booster prior to launch.

InSight was encapsulated inside the Atlas V’s 400-meter payload fairing in a  nearby processing facility during the WDR. The spacecraft was installed atop the rocket the following day, April 23.

Atlas V will be flying in the 401 configuration, the smallest version of the launcher with a four-meter payload fairing and no solid rocket boosters attached to the core stage.

InSight is shown encapsulated within its cruise stage prior to encapsulation in the Atlas V’s payload fairing. The cruise stage will protect the spacecraft and provide umbilical connections during the six-month trek to the red planet.

Liftoff is scheduled for 4:05am PDT May 5, with a launch window extending until 6:05am. InSight has a two hour launch window every day from May 5 until June 8, when the orbits of Earth and Mars are no longer in the proper alignment for an efficient interplanetary trajectory. 

Regardless of the spacecraft’s launch date, InSight will land on the martian surface around 3pm EST November 26.

InSight, short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, is the first-ever mission designed to study the interior of Mars. The stationary science platform will land in the Elysium Planitia region near Mars’ equator. 

A German-designed heat probe will dig 16 feet into the surface to detect interior thermal properties while a French-deisnged robotic arm will place a seismometer and other equipment on the surface nearby.

P/c: NASA/30th Space Wing.

T-7 hours - Exoplanet-hunting telescope poised for launch.

NASA’s latest telescope to search for habitable planets outside our solar system is preparing for launch later today, April 18. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, mission will spend a minimum of two years observing the brightest stars of the night sky for potential planetary transits.

Transits occur when a planet passes in between their parent star and the Earth, and can help uncover a plethora of data on the planets. These help scientists determine a planet’s mass, size, density, even atmospheric composition. 

TESS is the first telescope dedicated to exoplanet sky surveying. The 798-pound spacecraft measures 1.5 meters tall and 3.9 meters wide when its twin solar arrays are deployed. Four 16.8 megapixel cameras will survey up to 90% of the Southern sky during its first observation year with 90% of the Northern sky the second.

Mission scientists hope that TESS will survey more than 200,000 stars and detect 1,500 exoplanets during its initial observations.

Although NASA’s Kepler telescope has been searching for Exoplanets in deep space since it launched in 2009, TESS’ observations will be relegated primarily to much brighter stars within Earth’s celestial neighborhood. Also unlike Kepler, which focusses on smaller areas of the sky predetermined by scientists, TESS marks the first time the entire sky will be surveyed by a space-based exoplanet telescope. 

TESS will be the smallest payload ever lofted by the Falcon 9 rocket, though most of the booster’s power will be used to send the telescope in a 108,000 x 376,000 kilometer orbit. Known technically as a 2:1 Lunar resonant P/2 orbit, TESS will orbit the Earth twice during a single Lunar orbit. The high perigee ensures the telescope remains well above Earth’s dangerous Van Allen radiation belts. TESS is the first spacecraft to utilize such a orbit.

Falcon 9 is slated to launch TESS at 6:51pm EDT from SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral. The rocket’s first stage is expected to land on the droneship eight minutes after liftoff. At 40 minutes into the mission, the Falcon 9′s second stage engine will relight, sending TESS on a trajectory for a lunar flyby.

Watch the launch live beginning at around 6:30pm by clicking here.