Space News | Stratolaunch, Relativity LC-16, SLS Tests and Hubble

So we don't really have a name for this show yet. We don't have any cool opens or music. We don't even have a teleprompter. But I thought it was important to be able to get this show in front of the community as soon as possible given my video from this last week. And I think the best place to start with that would be launches. Liftoff occurred at 19.10 coordinated time Saturday aboard the majestic Delta IV Heavy from Space Launch Complex 6 at Vandenberg. That is a 71 meter tall rocket with three hydrogen-fueled Aerojet Rocketdyne built RS-68A main engines. The Delta IV Heavy rocket is the largest vehicle in United Launch Alliance's inventory. It's only flown twice from Vandenberg before. Once in 2011 and another time in 2013. Those missions are believed by analysts to have delivered new Keyhole or KH-11 electro-optical recon satellites into orbit. Now there's a little bit of confusion over whether this payload was actually KH-11 spy satellite. It's an unexpected orbit targeted by the Delta IV Heavy which raised some speculation that this rocket might carry a radar imaging satellite or perhaps a stealthy payload designed to evade tracking from the ground. And China's off to a solid start this year. A solid-fueled four-stage Long March 11 rocket fired four satellites into orbit at 05.42 coordinated time Monday from the Jiquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China's Inner Mongolia region. This added two spacecraft to the Chinese-owned Jilin-1 commercial earth imaging constellation and deploying two small sets on tech demonstration missions. Jilin-1 satellites are owned by Chang-1 Satellite Technology Co., a commercial spinoff of Chinese Academy of Sciences. They've launched 12 satellites in this family since 2015. The earth observation platforms are designed to collect high-definition video, colored pictures, and detailed hyperspectral imagery of earth. Some secondary payloads Lingkui-1A is the first test satellite for a planned constellation of earth observation and data relay satellite. The other payload Zhaoxing-103 is a tech demonstration satellite to verify radio communication and small remote sensing experiments. Moving from rockets that have just recently launched to a rocket that will unfortunately never launch, that's the Stratolaunch Medium Launch Vehicle. When you think Stratolaunch, you probably think about that gigantic airplane, the largest airplane by wingspan in the world. And that part of Stratolaunch is still happening. But the whole point of that giant plane is to strap a rocket to it and launch it from the air. It's that rocket that's changing. Again. Now here's a quick history lesson. Stratolaunch started in 2010 but actually wasn't announced until 2011. At this point there were three primary companies working together to create the whole system. Scaled Composites who would build it, Dynetics who would do the system engineering integration and testing, and SpaceX who would design and build the Falcon 9 air rocket. Now the Falcon 9 air rocket was to be a four-engine variant of the Falcon 9 system that we know and love today, specifically designed for use on the Stratolaunch carrier aircraft. It was designed to have a payload to low earth orbit of around 6,100 kilograms and was initially designed for satellites but they left the possibility open for a human variant too. While the demo videos of this system showed the Falcon 9 air with five engines, Stratolaunch actually confirmed it would have four Merlin 1D engines. Due to the specific needs of an air launch rocket there were some elements that didn't really fit in line with where SpaceX wanted to spend engineering and development time so Stratolaunch and SpaceX ended their partnership in 2012. Then in 2013 it was announced that Orbital Sciences Corporation would be the new provider with a new variant of the Pegasus rocket called the Pegasus 2 also known as the Thunderbolt. Specifically for Stratolaunch this rocket specs were very similar to the Falcon 9 air with 6,300 kilograms of payload to low earth orbit but this time it would be solid fuel on the first and second stages and the Hydrolox third stage. And in early 2014 Aerojet Rocketdyne was even contracted to build six of the RL10C-1 dual motor liquid engines for this vehicle and for a few years everything seemed fine. But then in 2016 it was announced that Stratolaunch would be moving away from the Thunderbolt and over to the now Orbital ATK Pegasus XL rocket. This is a currently operational rocket not a new one custom designed for Stratolaunch like the previous attempts. Typically the Pegasus XL rockets launched from a Lockheed L-1011-100 Tristar airplane but now it would be tasked with also launching from the Stratolaunch plane but instead of just one Pegasus XL at a time Stratolaunch could deploy three rockets into different orbital planes. Then a wild shift back to custom rockets this time designed in-house by Stratolaunch. In 2017 it was announced that Stratolaunch had signed a space act agreement with NASA's Stennis Space Center to test a new in-house built engine called the PGA. Those are the initials of the company founder Paul G. Allen who passed away in 2018. These engines would be used in the rockets that were announced in 2018 called Medium Launch Vehicle or MLV and have a low earth orbit capacity of 3,400 kilograms. There was also the Medium Launch Vehicle Heavy that would be able to deliver 6,000 kilograms to LEO and a reusable crewed space plane called Spaceplane. They brought in Jeff Thornburg who worked on NASA's J-2X engine as well as the SpaceX Raptor engine and even test fired the pre-burner at Stennis Space Center on November 2nd, 2018. These new in-house rockets would be added to the lineup in addition to the Pegasus XL so customers had four options to choose from but it was not to be. And now the news part of this update. Late last week it was announced that Stratolaunch would be moving back to what is now the Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems Pegasus XL exclusively and some of the teams working on the in-house rocket program would be laid off. In other words no more medium launch vehicles or space planes. It's been a wild and crazy ride for the rocket passenger of the Stratolaunch carrier airplane. Sounds like the plane itself is progressing nicely. On January 9th it was announced that the carrier airplane performed its fastest taxi test to date reaching a top speed of 352 kilometers per hour which also had the plane briefly lift the nose gear off the ground. We'll keep watching with keen interest the progress of Stratolaunch and its rocket passenger. I have even more rocket news this week. Relativity Space has won a contract with the U.S. Air Force to build a new launch site at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. They will be developing on the old Launch Complex 16 spot. This agreement allows Relativity to proceed with construction of things required to launch their Terran 1 rocket including the ground systems, hangar, transporter erector, propellant storage, and payload processing facility. Launch Complex 16 was built in the 1950s for use for testing of the Titan 1 and 2 missiles. It was later then transitioned over to NASA to support the Gemini and Apollo programs although nothing actually launched from there was just used for testing. It then transitioned back to the Air Force to be used with the Pershing missile the last launch of which was conducted on March 21st 1988 and then the very next day the site was deactivated where it has been sitting dormant ever since. Now Relativity is another small space launcher entering the market. Their Terran 1 rocket is unique in that they want to be able to 3D print the entire launch vehicle. They created their own 3D selective laser sintering system with the awesome name of Stargate. The goal is to 3D print 95% of the launcher including the engines by the end of 2020. For those familiar with 3D metal printing you know how insanely slow the process can be but Relativity hopes to eventually be able to print a complete vehicle within 60 days. That's right an entire rocket 3D printed in 60 days. The engines for the Terran 1 are the Aeon 1 which are designed to have over 68,000 newtons of force at sea level and 86,000 newtons in a vacuum. It's a methalox engine and like the launcher completely 3D printed as well. This isn't a paper engine either. Relativity has completed over 100 test firings of the Aeon 1 engine at the NASA Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. The Terran 1 rocket is a two-stage launcher. The first stage will use nine of those Aeon 1 engines with the second stage using only a single Aeon 1. The payload to low earth orbit is currently slated at 1,250 kilograms. They're hoping to get Launch Complex 16 operational around the end of 2020. This specific launch site will be good for low and mid-inclination orbits but will likely not be used for polar or sun synchronous orbits. For that they're looking at a second launch site elsewhere but that's not yet been announced. If you're thinking to yourself holy cow that is a lot of launches from the Cape. You've got SpaceX, Blue Origin, United Launch Alliance and now you're adding Relativity to the mix. Aren't those other larger launch providers gonna bump Relativity out of the way? Well Relativity says they're not concerned. Cape Canaveral has been working hard to be able to support up to 48 launches per year which is nearly one per week and at that flight rate they should be able to support quite a few different launch service providers, for now at least. If you're interested in learning more about Relativity Space we actually had CEO Tim Ellis on last year to talk about what they're up to. Hit up tomorrow.space orbit 11.19 to watch the full interview and we'll make sure to get Tim back on as soon as they get closer to launching their Terran 1 rocket. I do promise we're gonna have more than just rocket news in the Space News program. It just so happens that it's another rocket news story. It's the Space Launch System. The test article has entered the test stand. The liquid hydrogen tank structural test hardware for the Space Launch System has made it over to the test stand 4693 at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama on January 14th. This is a 45 meter tall test tank which is structurally identical to the flight version of the liquid hydrogen tank used for Space Launch System. This tank can hold over 2 million liters of liquid hydrogen sitting colder than negative 250 degrees Celsius. It's designed to undergo the stresses of launch here on the ground so engineers can look for any issues and validate that the design holds up to the expected stresses of launch. They'll push and pull on the tank itself to simulate said launch stress. The liquid hydrogen tank makes up two-thirds of the core stage for Space Launch System. Once combined with this liquid oxygen tank the center core will stand over 65 meters tall and 8.4 meters in diameter and these two tanks work together to feed the four RS-25 engines or those old space shuttle main engines at the base of the booster. Add to that the dual five-segment solid rocket motors and you have a rocket with over 39,400 kilonewtons of thrust at sea level. Test stand 4693 in and of itself is a bit of an interesting story too. This stand was designed and built specifically for SLS. It stands 67 meters tall and 35 meters wide. There's over 2,460 tons of steel superstructure in there and a five meter thick concrete foundation with 835 tons of steel embedded in that. So it's a massive structure designed to absolutely punish the core stage. To do that there are 38 hydraulic cylinders or load lines each weighing between 227 and 1451 kilograms. They are then positioned along the tank and can provide up to millions of kilograms of crushing force and over 150,000 kilograms of shearing or side force. All of this while the tanks are filled with cryogenics to simulate what it's like while in flight. They then attach specialized instruments to grab over 3,500 different measurements such as temperatures, pressures, imaging, strain, and deflection. Test stand 4693 is designed for the Space Launch System liquid hydrogen tank specifically and 4697 is for the SLS liquid oxygen tank. 4693 started construction in May 2014 and was completed December 2016. From here it will take up to four months to complete each tank's tests in a series of about 30 different scenarios. Now assuming the tank passes that'll get us one step closer to the first launch of SLS, NASA's next generation heavy lift rocket. Let's close this out with a happy news from space that that's not a rocket story and that is Hubble's working again. On Tuesday January 8th Hubble telemetry circuits detected voltage levels outside of a predefined range on the wide field three camera. Basically in English one of those sensors on Hubble said that voltage on the camera was either too high or too low and both of those scenarios can be very bad for electronics. The onboard Hubble systems autonomously suspended operations of the camera as a safety precaution. As engineers dug into the issue they found that the voltage levels actually appeared to be within normal range but the data coming back from the telemetry circuits themselves that was all out of whack. Engineering called up their friends at their local help desk who had them turn the telemetry circuits off and back on again. After resetting the circuits and associated boards some more data was captured and it was decided we're go to turn the wide field three camera back on again. Then at 1700 coordinated time on January 17th wide field three camera completed its first science observations after the outage bringing it back to full operational status again. A bit about wide field three it was installed on Hubble during the last servicing mission in May of 2009. It has taken over 240,000 observations to date and is the most used instrument on Hubble's current complement of sensors. There have been over 2,000 peer-reviewed published papers from just the data on this one sensor alone and much like a JPL designed Martian rover Hubble is in its 29th year of its 15 year designed lifetime. I look forward to seeing what new wonders we're able to grab from Hubble's continued use. So let us know what stories you would actually like us to pull forward into this week's live show. If you're watching on YouTube you can vote I don't know I'm not good at this so over here over here you can vote you can vote on what story you'd like moved forward and we'll discuss that on this weekend's live show. We'll probably push that over to Twitter as well. This is our first news segment so we're not entirely sure what the process is going to look like. Speaking of it being the first news I know it was a little bit rough. I probably was speaking too fast. We don't have any shiny new intros or anything like that and we don't even have a name for it so I would love your ideas as to what we call this segment. I don't want to call it Space Pods so leave it in the comments what should we actually call this something more fun than just Space News. And don't forget to hit up our live show this Saturday at 1800 Universal Time. The easiest way to remember that is to hit subscribe and that bell icon on YouTube so that you get a notification as to when we go live. It's a great place for everyone to get together have a social fun little party for an hour to celebrate the awesomeness that is the Cosmos. I look forward to seeing you there.