Space News | NASA's New Orion Plans, Exos launches and Troubleshooting INSIGHT

This is your Space News for March 14th, 2019. Let's start this thing off by handing it over to Space Mike for your Space Traffic Report. Hello everyone, welcome to your Space Traffic Report. My name is Space Mike, and this week we only had one rocket launch that occurred, a Chinese Long March 3B rocket that launched on Saturday, March 9th at 1728 UTC from Launch Complex 2 at the Xichang Space The payload on this rocket was the Chinasat-6C commercial communications satellite. It's the 19th in a fleet of Chinese satellites, some of which were formerly Chinastar, Cinosat, and Appstar satellites, before being acquired when the parent companies merged into the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. Chinasat-6C was apparently launched successfully, making this the third successful rocket launch for China in 2019. Now there was also some traffic at the International Space Station this week, and to continue their coverage of SpaceX's Crew Dragon Demo Mission 1, please welcome Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut. Hi, it's me, Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, and we are here to talk about, of course, the Crew Dragon capsule, SpaceX's first time using their new Dragon capsule. They wrapped up the end of an absolutely flawless mission. It started on Thursday, it was kind of the beginning of the end, and that's when they closed the hatch at 1239 Thursday afternoon. Now before they did that, though, they actually put about 300 pounds or 135 kilograms back into the Dragon capsule to send down so that, you know, sometimes it's a good idea to have some down mass from station, and this time they actually included a few things from a failing spacesuit, so they actually were able to get that home and now people are able to look at what went wrong with the suit. So it undocked at 2.38 a.m. Friday, and that officially began its reentry process, and soon after that, about five hours later, after it got far enough away from the station, it jettisoned its trunk that has the solar panels and the radiators on it, and then just a few minutes after that, it performed a 15-minute deorbit burn, so really, really, really slowly slowing itself down so that its perigeous lowest point in the orbit dips into the atmosphere and the atmosphere takes the rest of the work from there. It actually used the Draco thrusters that were under the nose cone, and the nose cone remained open during the burn. It also has the star trackers inside there, so then they just closed that up, and then it prepared for reentry. It ended up beginning reentry officially at about 8.30-ish a.m., so just a few minutes later, really about half hour later, it began to experience reentry. It ended up after that, after it slowed down enough, it released its drogue chute and drogue chutes and then four main parachutes, and this is different from Dragon 1, which only had three. It's an extra layer of redundancy, as well as a slower splashdown speed for added comfort for those astronauts, so everything looked absolutely perfect. It splashed down right on time, right on the bullseye. It's about 250 miles northeast of Kennedy Space Center, about 400 kilometers northeast, and it just splashed down absolutely right on target, right on time, looked absolutely beautiful. GoSearcher, the recovery vessel, went up to it, and they had it totally out of the which was fantastic. One of the parachutes did land on top of the Dragon capsule. They had to remove it quick, no big deal, but other than that, it was absolutely flawless. This is exactly what everyone was hoping for. I mean, you couldn't have asked for a better test flight of a vehicle, and this is looking very promising, and of course, next, they're going to take this exact Dragon capsule, and they're going to refurbish it up, strip it down a little bit, get it all ready, and then that Dragon capsule is going to perform the exciting in-flight abort test, hopefully this summer. We're here in June-ish, so that's going to be really exciting because it's going to have to perform an abort at maximum aerodynamic pressure, which is certainly going to be extremely exciting. So, everything looks fantastic. Congrats, SpaceX and NASA. This was a flawless mission. I cannot wait for the rest of the Dragon's exciting career. Thank you very much, Tim. Now, meanwhile, the Bear Sheet Lander has been making progress on its way towards the Moon, despite some sensitivity with its star trackers that allow it to navigate and a computer glitch where the navigation computer unexpectedly restarted before a planned maneuver. So far, though, the Israeli Lunar Lander has made three successful engine burns to steadily raise its elliptical orbit until it reaches the Moon in early April, and along the way, Bear Sheet has returned its first photo back to Earth, of the Earth. This is pretty cool, right? We'll definitely keep you in the loop as this small Lunar Lander continues its journey towards the surface of the Moon. In the meantime, over this next week, we hopefully will have a couple of rocket launches to enjoy. A Soyuz rocket is about to launch three new crew members to the International Space Station, two of which were on that aborted Soyuz rocket last year. A Delta IV rocket in its medium configuration, the last time that'll ever fly in that configuration, and hopefully we'll also see an Electron rocket from Rocket Lab. We generally don't consider suborbital launches part of our space traffic report, but we do enjoy new entrants to the market. Our own Lisa Stojanovski had a chance to go to Spaceport America to see one of those new entrants, and it had a special payload aboard. Microgravity research has led to discoveries of better medicines and new ways to treat diseases such as cancer and osteoporosis, but researchers typically have to wait weeks to months to get their experiments on the International Space Station or to fly on a suborbital rocket, and then wait again to get their experiments back. But suborbital launch provider Exos Aerospace is providing a way for scientists to get their experiments in microgravity faster, and to get them back within a matter of minutes. Exos launched their reusable Sarge rocket on March 2nd around 1645 UTC from the Spaceport America in New Mexico. This was the second flight of this rocket, which flew a power finder mission in August of 2018. This flight was dubbed Mission One and carried multiple payloads. These included a thermal energy transfer experiment by high schoolers, a NASA-sponsored vibration dampening device, and a University of Central Florida experiment that will help us understand the early formation of the solar system through monitoring how dust sticks to itself in microgravity. Purdue University provided a sensor package to enhance the science of all experiments by precisely monitoring environmental conditions such as air pressure and temperature inside the payload module. The Center for Applied Space Technologies and the Mayo Clinic collaborated on a multiple biomedical payload, sending up live cells looking for new ways to understand brain tumors and the compounds that cells secrete both during launch, microgravity, and landing. Exos Aerospace makes this experiment possible with their rapid rocket recovery. The Sarge rocket returns gently under a steerable parachute, in this case landing only 1.2 kilometers from the launch site. The rocket and payloads were returned in just around 30 minutes post-launch. This meant the biomedical experiments were able to be frozen and preserved in a near pristine state, dramatically enhancing the quality of the science and the knowledge we can gain. This is because the longer that cells spend sitting around in the desert post-launch, the more chance they will die or degrade. This launch also carried an extra special payload for tomorrow. Ten limited edition Tomorrow patches flew to the edge of space as part of the Agronautics payload. Agronautics flew a sample of hops that will be turned into a space beer by Celestial Beerworks in Dallas, Texas. Unfortunately, the Sarge rocket only reached a maximum altitude of 20 kilometers due to strong upper level winds, which pushed the rocket outside its FAA-mandated safety zone and caused an early shutdown of the engine. According to Exos Aerospace's website, the next Sarge launch is just about three months away. This rapid launch cadence and smooth recovery operations are set to revolutionize the microgravity research industry, and we can't wait to see the science that's on board the next launch. Still talking about rockets, NASA had some interesting news this week. On March 13th, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine opened the possibility for flying Exploration Mission 1 around the moon in 2020, but not launched by the Space Launch System, but rather a commercial partner. Now this was an interesting exchange, so we're going to leave a good chunk of it intact for you. SLS is struggling to meet its schedule. It was originally intended to launch in December of 2019 with, as you mentioned, sir, no later than June of 2020. We are now understanding better how difficult this project is and that it is going to take some additional time. I want to be really clear. I think we as an agency need to stick to our commitments. Sir, if we tell you and others that we're going to launch in June of 2020 around the moon, which is what EM-1 is, I think we should launch around the moon in June of 2020, and I think it can be done. We need to consider as an agency all options to accomplish that objective. Some of those options would include launching the Orion crew capsule and the European service module on a commercial rocket. Ah, commercial rocket, you say. Now that begs the question. Whose rocket would that be? And this is the part where I was like, he's gonna say Falcon Heavy. The challenge is we don't have a rocket right now that can launch Orion and the European service module around the moon. That rocket doesn't exist. There isn't such a rocket. It doesn't, it doesn't, that's what the SLS is all about. Now, here's what we can do. Potentially, again, we're starting the process now. We could use two heavy lift rockets to put the European service module into orbit around the Orion crew capsule and the European service module in orbit around the earth, launch a second heavy lift rocket to put an upper stage in orbit around the earth, and then dock those two together to throw around the moon the Orion crew capsule with the European service module. Now that is, I want to be clear, we do not have right now an ability to dock the Orion crew capsule with anything in orbit. So between now and June of 2020, we would have to make that a reality. So not a really clear and concise answer on what launcher. It really sounds like they don't know and they need a few more weeks to figure things out. We're going to continue to watch this story as it develops because it has interesting ramifications for the space launch system as a whole. Now let's move our attention over from the moon on to Mars, and I'll hand this baton over to Jared. NASA's InSight lander has started its science mission in earnest, but a small problem has developed with one of its two primary science instruments. Landing on November 26, 2018, InSight is one hell of a backronym, standing for Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport. Primarily aimed at studying Mars' interior, this could reveal to us how terrestrial objects in our solar system like Mercury, Venus, Earth, Earth's moon, and Mars formed and evolved over time. Initial photos showed a rocky surface around InSight's landing area, but a stroke of luck saw it land on top of a geological feature called a hollow, a crater that's been filled in with dust. Rather fortuitous with how smooth the surface InSight came to a stop on was. The seismometer, which can measure the movement of the ground to as small as half the width of a hydrogen atom, was deployed without a hitch, and it's currently taking in data as you watch this. The Heat and Physical Properties Package, also called HP3, was also deployed to the surface without any problems. It carries temperature sensors that will help determine how much heat Mars is losing, which will give us an idea of what Mars' interior layers are. A spring-driven hammer pushes a 40-centimeter probe device, nicknamed the mole, into the ground. It only runs for a few hours at a time, generating quite a bit of heat from the hammering technique's friction. It then waits a few days to allow the whole system to cool. Hammering began on February 28th, and a second round was initiated on March 2nd, but data now indicates that a third round of hammering did not move the mole, and that it's currently sitting at a 15-degree angle. Work has started at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, with a high-fidelity engineering mock-up of the lander, called Foresight, to determine the source of the problem. Scientists and engineers from the German Aerospace Center, DLR, and JPL are working to figure out the present issue. Data shows the mole and its hammer is working correctly, and the seismometer is picking up its movements. The potential problem may be that within the A rock is impeding any deeper progress, and troubleshooting is continuing. If there's one thing I've learned, it's to never bet against the absurdly brilliant minds at JPL when it comes to solving a problem somewhere in space. Thank you, Jared. Now let's take a closer look at our own local star, and for that, our own Dr. Tametha Scove brings us our latest Space Weather Report. Space weather this week is getting very exciting. As we switch to our front side sun, you can see a couple of bright regions. Now the top region is Rogue Region 2734, and the reason we call it Rogue is because it's showing some influence from the new solar cycle, that's Solar Cycle 25, and it's far more active. You can see after this lunar eclipse here, it fires off an Earth-directed solar storm. In fact, it fires off several of these storms over a couple days. That first main storm has hit us at Earth. It has brought Aurora down to Michigan, and as far north as New Zealand. Now as we switch to our backside sun, you can see in Stereo's view on the west limb, you can see a couple of those solar storms being fired, but what you also see is some bright regions on the sun's backside. Those will be rotating into Earth view here in the next couple days, so amateur radio operators and Aurora photographers, we do have more activity on the way, so it looks like this week is going to be fun. Switching to our moon, we are now passing through the first quarter moon phase, with that being on the 14th, and even by the 16th, the moon will be about 70% illuminated, so it will be lighting up the skies, so you night sky watchers, you'll need to check your local rise and set times. And now for your LEO, MEO, GEO orbit outlook. As we switch to our low energy space environment, these are the particles that can cause surface charging on satellites, including charging up the solar arrays and causing all sorts of electrical discharges. You can see those fluxes building around outside of the GEO orbit, and even beginning to infiltrate inside the GEO orbit down into the MEO orbits. This is what happens when you have a solar storm, folks. It causes these radiation belts to start getting very energized, so you satellite operators expect to have some possibility for surface charging issues easily over the next few days. For more details on the space weather this week, including aurora photos from where it's been seen during these solar storms, how the storms have affected amateur radio, GPS, and emergency response, and also what more storms are in store for us, come visit my channel or check me out at spaceweatherwoman.com. We're still working on solidifying our actual guest for our live show this week. It's either going to be Rod Pyle talking about the settlement of space, or with that very recent Orion announcement, we might be talking about the space launch system in Exploration Mission 1. No matter what we end up with, the live shows are a lot of fun. Check them out each Saturday at 1800 Universal Time. I also want to take a moment and thank all of the citizens of tomorrow. These are the people who contribute to financially support the show. Without your help, we wouldn't be able to make these space news and live shows happen. We're even thinking of a possible new space conversation show to kind of pick up that slack from our old discussion topics, and it is this list of people who enable us to build fun, new space-based programming. If you enjoy this and want to help contribute, check out patreon.com slash tmro, or our new monthly campaign I'm testing out at subscribestar.com slash tmro. That's our show this week, thank you so much for watching, and I look forward to talking to you tomorrow. I think that's so cool that they're using the seismometer to measure the movements to try to see if there's an issue going on in each hammer. So they're checking each individual hammer so far. That's ridiculous. It's redonkulous. If there's one thing I've learned, it's to never bet against the absurdly brilliant minds at JPL when it comes to solving a problem somewhere in space.