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Some Surprising New Finding About Saturn's Moon Titan

DISCOVERIES Falling on the Moon Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, is known for its tangerine-colored skies and nearly six million square miles of large, dark dunes that cover its surface. Some of them are as big as the massive dunes found on Earth, but how they formed has been a topic of debate among astronomers. Now, a new study is suggesting that Titan’s dark sand mounds are the product of comets and other space objects that fell on the moon millions of years ago, Science News reported. A research team based their findings on a popular theory on how our solar system evolved some four billion years ago: Before they took their current positions, giant planets migrated from where they formed. During this migration, the planets and their moons passed through the Kuiper Belt, a region of the solar system packed with comets, rocks and dwarf planets. Crossing this area would have bombarded them with comets, space dust and other space debris, according to the researchers. They ran a series of computer simulations on how Saturn, Jupiter and their moons evolved during this period to estimate the scale of the impacts they received. Their findings showed that dust and the impactors could have delivered enough material to form Titan’s dark dunes. Researchers also noticed that this material also struck Jupiter’s moon Calisto and another Saturnine moon Iapetus – both of which have large patches of dark material. Still, astronomers have suggested that Iapetus’ dark patches emerged from somewhere else, further complicating the origin of Titan’s sands. The authors and others hope that NASA’s upcoming Dragonfly mission to Titan – scheduled to launch in 2028 – will provide some answers about the lunar dunes.

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Preventing A Space Pearl Harbor

SJ-21 Maneuvers by China’s SJ-21 in GEO, including moving a Beidou satellite out of the belt, is just one of the many Chinese space activities with counterspace implications. (credit: ExoAnalytic Solutions) Preventing a “Space Pearl Harbor”: Rep. Turner leads the charge by Brian G. Chow Monday, March 25, 2024 Bookmark and Share Accolades are due to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner and the White House for a quick and amicable settlement of Russia’s developing space threat. It involved a balancing act between the American public’s need to know and the Biden Administration’s need for secrecy. If a Chinese spacecraft can dock with a friendly satellite to refuel, repair, or transport it, the same robotic arm can also disable a US satellite’s solar panels and antennas. On February 14, Turner asked that President Biden “declassify all information” relating to a “serious national security threat.” The very next day, the White House confirmed that Russia is developing an “anti-satellite weapon,” but “there is no immediate threat to anyone’s safety.” On February 20, the public further learned that Russia is developing a “space-based nuclear anti-satellite weapon.” While it is a limited declassification, the administration rightly said that fuller disclosure could reveal to adversaries the sources and methods of how the US collects intelligence. Let’s hope that, on the heels of his recent success, Turner leads the charge to counter the most urgent national security threat facing the US and the free world: China’s use of a new kind of anti-satellite weapon to generate a “Space Pearl Harbor” as a precursor to seizing Taiwan sometime later this decade. While this scenario is drawing attention in the public, the Defense Department has not openly commented on it. Space Pearl Harbor is a surprise attack on critical US satellites that causes devastating impacts similar to those on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Dual-use robotic spacecraft will soon become the anti-satellite weapon of choice for mounting this attack. The development of such spacecraft that can dock with other satellites has been ongoing in the US since 1990 and in China since 2008, almost two decades behind. In February 2020, a US company successfully docked a robotic spacecraft with another friendly satellite. Less than two years later, China accomplished the same feat in January 2022, narrowing the gap on estimates from many US experts inside and outside of the government that it would take far longer for China to catch up. If a Chinese spacecraft can dock with a friendly satellite to refuel, repair, or transport it, the same robotic arm can also disable a US satellite’s solar panels and antennas. Alternatively, China can use these spacecraft to tow satellites into locations where they can, at best, only sub-optimally perform intended duties such as early warning, surveillance, or geolocation. Based on public commercial data that tells a lot about the military potential of these dual-use robotic spacecraft, we have shown that China can manufacture and deploy 200 such spacecraft as early as 2026, enough to cripple critical US satellites in geosynchronous, highly elliptical, and other orbits, and thus severely degrading space support to wartime operations. Will the US be ready to avert a surprise attack with robotic spacecraft that will likely arrive years ahead of expectations of so many space experts? The House Intelligence Committee and the Congress must make space readiness and governance a high priority on their current agenda. Turner’s next inquiries should focus on US preparedness against a Space Pearl Harbor. Although it is well known that such an attack on critical US satellites would cause untold devastation, the Defense Department has not disclosed to the American public details on the specific anti-satellite weapons and a plan for defense. It should first be clear that, before DoD can estimate the timing and magnitude of any potential surprise attack and develop a timely preparedness to counter it, it must specify which anti-satellite weapons and how many of them will be used in the attack. However, the Pentagon has not publicly revealed whether it has made that all-important specification. This raises public concerns that, at this late date, DoD might not have such a specification, whether classified or unclassified, even for its own internal use. This is not an empty worry: Gen. John Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the second highest-ranking US military officer at the time, said on the eve of this retirement in October 2021 that “although we’re making marginal progress, the DoD is still unbelievably bureaucratic and slow” in its response to China’s rapidly advancing space weapons. If DoD’s preparedness to prevent Space Pearl Harbor is too slow, it is better to find out now than later so that DoD and others can catch up. As far back as 1985, nuclear strategist Albert Wohlstetter and I penned an op-ed, ”Arms Control That Could Work”. We considered that satellites can become anti-satellite spacecraft. We accordingly proposed a framework of self-defense zones to “facilitate unilateral defense against a surprise attack on satellites.” Since 2015, this space architecture has been updated to reflect the current and future space environment and advances in anti-satellite weapons such as dual-use robotic spacecraft discussed here. In June 2021, Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, testified before Congress that President Xi Jinping had ordered the Chinese military to accelerate its timeline for attaining the operational capability to seize Taiwan by force from 2035 to 2027.Turner has taken the vital initial step of bringing the issue of high-tech anti-satellite weaponry to current headlines and the forefront of American consciousness. With a capability to mount a Space Pearl Harbor as early as 2026, a key question is whether China can use this surprise attack as a precursor to enhance the already substantial odds of successfully seizing Taiwan. The House Intelligence Committee and the Congress must make space readiness and governance a high priority on their current agenda. Turner’s next inquiries should focus on US preparedness against a Space Pearl Harbor. Turner and others should first get classified briefings from DoD and the US intelligence community and then direct them to prepare a public disclosure on DoD’s plan to prevent and react to a Space Pearl Harbor. Specifically, the US plan must acknowledge China’s accelerated timetable of being capable to take Taiwan by force from 2035 to 2027. The public needs Congress to represent its national security interests and hold DoD accountable for both unclassified and classified disclosures. Turner sounded the alarm about Russia’s developing anti-satellite weapon out of fear that the Biden administration was “sleepwalking into an international crisis.” It is even more important for him to sound the alarm about China’s already developed anti-satellite weapon out of the same fear, making sure that DoD and others will be ready to prevent a Space Pearl Harbor and save Taiwan should aggression come sometime in the 2020s. Brian Chow (Ph.D. in physics, MBA with distinction, Ph.D. in finance) is an independent policy analyst with more than 180 publications. He can be reached at brianchow.sp@gmail.com.

Lessons From The CLPS Lunar Lander

IM-1 landing An image of the IM-1 landing, showing one of the lunar lander legs breaking as the spacecraft hit the surface faster than it was designed to. (credit: Intuitive Machines) Lessons from the first CLPS lunar landing missions by Jeff Foust Monday, March 25, 2024 Bookmark and Share The IM-1 lunar lander mission officially came to an end Saturday. As the Sun dipped below the horizon on February 29, nearly a week after landing, flight controllers at Intuitive Machines put the lander, known as Odysseus or “Odie,” into a mode so that, when sunlight returned to the lander in a few weeks, it could wake up and start transmitting—if it managed to survive bitterly cold conditions. It was, the company acknowledged, a long shot, but the company started listening for any transmissions on Wednesday, when, by its calculations, the landers panels should be illuminated again, generating power to operate its transmitter. Crain said he was confident that, had those laser rangefinders been working, “we would have nailed the landing.” “We have been listening since then and we will continue to listen,” said Trent Martin, senior vice president of space systems at the company, during a panel discussions Thursday at the American Astronautical Society’s Goddard Space Science Symposium at the University of Maryland. “I think it’s highly unlikely that it will, but there is a possibility and we will listen for the next couple of days.” The company concluded Saturday that the spacecraft would not revive. “Odie’s power system would not complete another call home,” the company announced on social media. “This confirms that Odie has permanently faded after cementing its legacy into history as the first commercial lunar lander to land on the Moon.” With both IM-1 and Astrobotic’s Peregrine missions now complete, both companies are taking stock of what they achieved and where they fell short as they plan their next missions. In the case of IM-1, despite a hard landing that caused the land to fall almost on its side—the company ultimately concluded it was tipped at a 60-degree angle—it was able to operate most of the spacecraft’s payloads from NASA and commercial customers. At a briefing in late February, as the mission was winding down, both NASA and the company said that the NASA payloads in particular had generated at least some data. In an earnings call Thursday, Steve Altemus, CEO of Intuitive Machines, said the company estimated it was in line to earn 95% of the payments the company was eligible for under its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) task order from NASA for the mission. The missing 5%, he said, is the result of one payload, the Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS). However, he said the company is talking with NASA about alternative data it could provide to meet that payload’s requirements and earn that remaining 5%. Odysseus made a hard landing because its laser rangefinders were not operational: a safety switch, in place on the ground because the lasers are not eye-safe, was not flipped before launch. The company initially thought they could get around it by making a last-second patch to the lander’s software, allowing it to use data from one of the NASA payloads, the Navigation Doppler Lidar (NDL) instrument (see “The phases of lunar lander success, revisited”, The Space Review, February 26, 2024). But at that late February briefing, the company disclosed that workaround didn’t work. Tim Crain, chief technology officer, said a “data flag” in the software was not set to allow it to use the NDL data. “So those did not process after all,” he said. “Basically, we landed with our IMU [inertial measurement unit] and our optical navigation data flow algorithms.” The lander was intended to land straight down at a speed of about one meter per second. Instead, it landed at three meters per second and with about one meter per second of sideways motion. That was hard enough to break at least one landing leg and cause the lander to tip over. Crain said he was confident that, had those laser rangefinders been working, “we would have nailed the landing.” Altemus said on the earnings call that, as his company turns it attention to IM-2, it will make only minor changes to the Nova-C lander design. Besides ensuring the laser rangefinder is properly configured, he said there were a few other areas that “needed adjustment,” like antennas and cameras. “We don’t see any impact to the schedule based on the changes from IM-1. They’re fairly straightforward.” That IM-2 mission is scheduled for launch in November, but he said NASA was interested in moving the landing locations slightly in the lunar south polar region to make it more likely the agency’s main payload, PRIME-1, can access water ice there. “We are still planning for a 2024 mission for IM-2,” he said. Griffin and VIPER Astrobotic’s Griffin lander is designed to deliver NASA’s VIPER lunar rover. (credit: Astrobotic) Peregrine and Griffin Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander never made it to the Moon: a propellant leak several hours after its January 8 launch ruled out any landing attempt. The spacecraft’s mission ended a week and a half after its launch with a reentry over the South Pacific (see “The phases of lunar lander success”, The Space Review, January 22, 2024). “There will probably be some hardware impacts and some schedule impacts on Griffin,” Thornton said of Astrobotic’s next, larger lander. However, while the payloads on the lander from NASA and other customers didn’t make it to the surface of the Moon, they still were able to operate. During a session about the mission at the Lunar and Planetary Sciences Conference (LPSC) earlier this month, representatives of several of the payloads said they were able to operate, and in some cases collect science data, from them. Those instruments were repurposed in some cases, such as radiation sensors intended to operate on the lunar surface but which instead took data in cislunar space. “We had to move our operations around to pull data down during the flight,” said Stuart George of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, one of the leaders of the Linear Energy Transfer Spectrometer instrument. “The instrument worked perfectly the whole time.” Other payloads were instead put through their paces; a spectrometer, for example, was able to detect traces of the oxidizer that leaked out of Peregrine. Even Iris, a lunar rover built by students at Carnegie Mellon University, was tested while attached to the lander, testing many of its subsystems. “We became a ‘RoverSat’ instead,” said Raewyn Duvall, program manager for Iris. “Everything that we were allowed to test worked.” She added that the student-led project even studied the feasibility of deploying the rover while in space, a proposal ultimately nixed by spacecraft controllers. While the payload teams evaluated the data they were able to collect, Astrobotic has been investigating what went wrong with the lander. Even before the mission ended, the company said the likely cause of the propellant leak was a valve failure that caused helium to rush into an oxidizer tank, overpressurizing it. Astrobotic established a failure investigation board, with an independent chair to come up with a root cause for the leak and corrective actions. “They’re making really good progress,” said Dan Hendrickson, vice president of business development at Astrobotic, during the Goddard Symposium panel. That review “is close to wrapping up,” John Thornton, CEO of Astrobotic, said in an interview. “We’re going to be prepared to get all of the lessons learned out of that and into Griffin.” Griffin is Astrobotic’s next lander, significantly larger than Peregrine. It will take to the south polar regions of the Moon NASA’s VIPER lunar rover. Even as the investigation is in progress work on Griffin is continuing, Thornton said. Before Peregrine, NASA had projected a launch of Griffin carrying VIPER late this year, but the investigation into Peregrine and subsequent changes will likely delay it. “There will probably be some hardware impacts and some schedule impacts on Griffin, but we've got to finish that process to know exactly how much and where,” he said. Those hardware impacts, he said, will likely including replacing valves on Griffin. NASA also expects Griffin to slip. “It is extremely unlikely they will fly before the end of this year,” Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said of that mission at a planetary science advisory committee meeting in early March. He added at a town hall meeting at LPSC that NASA will wait until that failure review is complete before considering a revised scheduled for the mission. “We will look at their failure review board findings and determine what steps we need to take for VIPER.” “Although we selected 14 companies,” Kearns said, “it was never NASA’s goal to have government business for all 14 companies.” Astrobotic is also bringing in more expertise to help with Griffin. The company announced last week it had hired Steve Clarke, a former NASA official most recently at Sierra Space, as its vice president of landers and spacecraft, as well as Frank Peri, former head of the safety and mission assurance office at NASA’s Langley Research Center, as its director of engineering. Two former NASA associate administrators for space technology, Mike Gazarik and Jim Reuter, will also serve as advisors. “I think the key there is to make sure that Astrobotic has access to as much experience as possible,” Thornton said. “They represent a nice cross section of industry and provide us reach back into many more segments of the industry.” Blue Ghost The next CLPS mission currently scheduled to launch is Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander late this year. (credit: Firefly Aerospace) Thinking about CLPS 2.0 With two missions now complete, NASA and industry are taking stock of CLPS. The “shots on goal” philosophy espoused for the mission more than five years ago appears to have been vindicated: while neither mission was totally successful, there’s been no public outcry—or, more importantly, congressional criticism—about them. Assuming Griffin/VIPER does slip beyond this year, NASA expects two more CLPS to launch this year: IM-2 and Blue Ghost, the first lunar lander by Firefly Aerospace. Firefly and Intuitive Machines each have an additional CLPS mission awarded by NASA, along with Draper. At the planetary science advisory committee meeting early this month, committee members asked Kearns how to make CLPS sustainable. They pointed to examples like Masten Space Systems, which also won a CLPS award only to go bankrupt, and Orbit Beyond, which received a task order alongside Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines in 2019 only to return it two months later. “We’ve taken steps since the initial task orders and since the Chapter 11 reorganization of Masten so that the way we’re doing those procurements, the criteria that we’re using, are actually different,” he said. NASA still lists 14 companies as part of the CLPS program, a list that includes bankrupt Masten as well as several others that have shown little overt progress in recent years, like Moon Express and Orbit Beyond. Blue Origin and SpaceX are also part of CLPS even as they work on the Human Landing System program for Artemis crewed missions. NASA picked that many companies because it was unclear who would succeed. “We wanted a very broad IDIQ [indefinite delivery indefinite quantity] pool of vendors who could propose to do landing missions,” Kearns said, “because we really didn’t understand who, and what technical approaches, would be successful.” “Although we selected 14 companies,” he added, “it was never NASA’s goal to have government business for all 14 companies.” He noted that the original CLPS contracts have a period of performance that runs to the late 2020s. “If want to continue to get access to the Moon in this way, we have to set up some type of successor mechanism,” he said, dubbed CLPS 2.0. The lessons from the original CLPS contract will feed into that future contract, which might mean that second contract might fewer companies. “We have not internally discussed the amount of competition that we need in the long term,” he said. He did, though, suggest that a shift to a new CLPS contract could come even sooner than the late 2020s. “We might decide, based on progress this year and next year, that we might want to advance the date that we do CLPS 2.0,” he said. “There are a lot of different options of what could be done with that.” In the meantime, Astrobotic, Draper, Firefly, and Intuitive Machines, and possibly others that win future CLPS task orders, will be taking more shots on goal. Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.

A Great Review Of The Television Series "For All Mankind"

For All Mankind Masha Mashkova and Joel Kinnaman in the fourth season of “For All Mankind”. (credit: Apple TV+) “For All Mankind”: space drama’s alternate history constructs a better vision of NASA by Val Nolan Monday, March 25, 2024 Bookmark and Share The Conversation Great art is often difficult to quantify. The Apple TV+ series “For All Mankind” is a case in point, running the risk of being too sci-fi for drama fans (rockets, moon bases, Mars) and having too much naturalistic drama for sci-fi aficionados (jealousy, divorce, institutional politics). The defining trait of “For All Mankind” is scrutinizing how the foibles of individuals can make or break a whole civilization’s journey to the stars. Nonetheless, the show consistently rewards both sets of viewers by brilliantly blurring the line between reality and alternate history. It tells a compelling story wherein the Soviet Union beat the US to land on the Moon and, consequently, the space race never ended. “For All Mankind” begins in an Apollo era transformed by the inclusion of women, characters of color, and LGBTQ+ protagonists. The show moves through the creation of long-term lunar habitation in the 1980s and, eventually, crewed landings on Mars in the mid-1990s—with all the downstream technological benefits that implies (electric cars in the 1980s, anyone?) The most recent fourth season went on to explore the implication of humanity’s first steps on the Red Planet, adding a focus on extractive industries and energy politics to the show’s longstanding interrogation of American Manifest Destiny: the idea that God intended the US to spread democracy and capitalism across the world. Jamestown, the US lunar base, deliberately echoes the first permanent Anglo colony in the Americas, for example. Yet, the defining trait of “For All Mankind” is scrutinizing how the foibles of individuals can make or break a whole civilization’s journey to the stars. Its powerful message is that the most mission-critical systems of all are human beings and their interpersonal relationships, which is an excellent lesson for storytellers. Astronaut fiction “For All Mankind” mines a rich vein of astronaut screen fiction, starting with the now-forgotten black-and-white TV show “Men Into Space” (1959). That series anticipated many of the elements which “For All Mankind” would later double down on, such as women astronauts, realistic technical challenges, and the search for water on the Moon. In their 1960s and 1970s heyday, of course, astronauts were everywhere. Science and fiction blurred in countless pulp tales, B-movies, magazine features, novels and comics. Even a space-suited Barbie debuted four years before a man would walk on the Moon. David Bowie sang about a “space oddity” in 1969 (later covered by astronaut Chris Hadfield, who filmed the first music video in space), while in 1977, “Star Trek” actress Nichelle Nichols was tasked by NASA with recruiting a more diverse field of astronaut candidates. More recent forerunners of “For All Mankind” include Apollo 13 (1995) and its magnificent companion TV series, “From the Earth to the Moon” (1998). Then there are the blockbusters like Ridley Scott’s The Martian (2015) and the visually stunning Gravity (2013). Hidden Figures (2016) dramatized the real-life history of NASA’s African-American women mathematicians, who overcame discrimination to contribute greatly to America’s earliest space missions. Nixon’s women While building upon all of these, “For All Mankind” stands out—like Hidden Figures—for its willingness to deconstruct the myth of the straight white male flyboy. That character is here personified by the temperamental Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman) and the upward-failing father and son astronauts Gordo and Danny Stevens (Michael Dorman and Casey W. Johnson). The stereotypical all-American hero, the show says, is likely prone to anger-management issues, substance abuse, and infidelity. In their place, the series uses an alternate history to reconstruct a better, more inclusive, and even more diverse vision of NASA. “For All Mankind” stands out—like Hidden Figures—for its willingness to deconstruct the myth of the straight white male flyboy. In the third episode of season one, set in the 1970s, NASA seeks to counter Russia’s landing of a woman on the moon by recruiting women pilots of its own. These characters are known as “Nixon’s women.” Among them is the deceptively quiet Ellen Waverly (Jodi Balfour), former NASA “computer” Danielle Poole (Krys Marshall), and the barnstorming Molly Cobb (Sonya Walger). They quickly become central protagonists in humanity’s interplanetary expansion. While the show usurps Sally Ride’s distinction as the first American woman in space, it compensates by making its fictionalized Ride (Ellen Wroe) a moral heavyweight during a Cuban Missile Crisis-style lunar standoff. Yet, even in this timeline, some things remain the same. In the third season, a gay astronaut comes out in a broadcast from the surface of Mars, only to find that historical prejudice has followed him to another planet. His openness inadvertently inspires the creation of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” military policy. But the difference here is that “For All Mankind”’s US president is themself a closeted character, who must reach a difficult personal and political reckoning with this policy. Their resulting ethical quandary is played with the acute introspection of literary drama, but their story—a cognitive estrangement asking us to look anew at our own history—is enabled by the narrative apparatus of science fiction. It encapsulates what makes “For All Mankind” potentially the greatest show on television right now: meaningful human tales told against an interplanetary backdrop. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Val Nolan teaches in the Department of English and Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University.

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Giant New Volcano Discovered On Mars

DISCOVERIES Too Big To See Scientists recently announced the discovery of a colossal Martian volcano that had been “hiding in plain sight” for decades, Sky News reported. This 280-mile-wide geological behemoth is nestled near the equator in Mars’ Tharsis volcanic province and remained elusive despite repeated observations by NASA’s orbiting spacecraft since 1971. Researchers came across the newly-found Noctis volcano – named in honor of its location at the edge of scenic Noctis Labyrinthus, or “Labyrinth of the Night” – while studying suspected glacier remnants and potential landing sites for future missions. “We were examining the geology of an area where we had found the remains of a glacier last year when we realized we were inside a huge and deeply eroded volcano,” noted lead author Pascal Lee. Presenting their findings at last week’s 55th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas, Lee and his team suggested that the gargantuan volcano had been active for a very long time judging by its size and “complex modification history.” Co-author Sourabh Shubham added that the area surrounding the Noctis volcano is known to be rich in various hydrated minerals “spanning a long stretch of Martian history.” “A volcanic setting for these minerals had long been suspected,” he explained. “So, it may not be too surprising to find a volcano here. In some sense, this large volcano is a long-sought ‘smoking gun’.” The authors highlighted that the discovery offers an “exciting new location to study Mars’ geologic evolution through time, search for life, and explore with robots and humans in the future.”

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Accelerating Starship

Starship launch Starship/Super Heavy lifts off March 14 from SpaceX’s Starship site in South Texas. (credit: SpaceX) Accelerating Starship by Jeff Foust Monday, March 18, 2024 Bookmark and Share When Starship lifted off Thursday morning from SpaceX’s launch site at Boca Chica, Texas, the one question on most people’s minds was this: how far would it get this time? Its first flight, nearly 11 months earlier, ended four minutes after liftoff when the tumbling Starship/Super Heavy stack was detonated by a flight termination system; the liftoff had, in the process, made a mess of the pad because of the lack of a water deluge system (see “Grading on a suborbital curve”, The Space Review, April 24, 2023). “Really the point of today’s test is to try to get as much data as we can so we can inform the next iteration of the design of Starship, work those things into flight test number four, and new objectives there that will eventually get us that glorious rapid reusable future that we so badly want,” said Bharadvaj. The second flight, in November, made it through staging, only to suffer separate failures of the Super Heavy booster on its descent back to the Gulf of Mexico and the Starship on the final phases of its ascent (see “Starship flies again”, The Space Review, November 20, 2023). SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in January that the Starship upper stage caught fire when venting excess liquid oxygen late in the burn. “If it had a payload,” he said at a company event at Boca Chica, “it would have made it to orbit because the reason that it actually didn’t quite make it to orbit was we vented the liquid oxygen, and the liquid oxygen ultimately led to a fire and an explosion.” SpaceX later explained that it carried excess liquid oxygen “to gather data representative of future payload deploy missions and needed to be disposed of prior to reentry to meet required propellant mass targets at splashdown.” In that same statement, SpaceX said the Super Heavy booster had a blocked liquid oxygen line to its Raptor engines during its boostback maneuver “that eventually resulted in one engine failing in a way that resulted in loss of the vehicle.” Those issues, certainly, would be addressed for the third flight, alternatively called Integrated Flight Test (IFT) 3, Orbital Flight Test (OFT) 3, or simply Flight 3. The question was how much further the flight would get. “We have some really ambitious goals for today’s test, but really the point of today’s test is to try to get as much data as we can so we can inform the next iteration of the design of Starship, work those things into flight test number four, and new objectives there that will eventually get us that glorious rapid reusable future that we so badly want,” said Siva Bharadvaj, one of the host of SpaceX’s webcast of the launch, just a few minutes before launch. The rocket got off the ground without incident: a clean countdown, with the only delay caused by ships (shrimpers, SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell later said) in restricted waters offshore. Two minutes and 45 seconds after liftoff, the vehicle successfully completed “hot staging,” where the Starship upper stage ignited its engines while still attached to Super Heavy, a move designed to increase performance by avoiding any gap in thrust. As Super Heavy descended towards the Gulf of Mexico, Starship continued its ascent. Eight and a half minutes after liftoff, Starship shut down its six Raptor engines, having reached a speed of neatly 26,500 kilometers per hour. “Nominal orbit insertion,” launch controllers said. Strictly speaking, Starship was not in orbit. The vehicle was flying a suborbital trajectory, but one that was different from that planned for the first two flights, which would have had Starship splash down near Hawaii 90 minutes after liftoff. This flight was going on a higher trajectory that would bring it down over a stretch of the Indian Ocean about 65 minutes after liftoff. The change in trajectory, the company said, would allow it to carry out additional tests, in particular a brief relight of Starship’s engines, without jeopardizing public safety. “Congrats to SpaceX on a successful test flight! Starship has soared into the heavens,” said NASA administrator Bill Nelson. Other tests included opening the vehicle’s slot-shaped payload bay doors, dubbed “Pez” doors like the candy because they are designed for the ejection of Starlink satellites, one or two at a time. Another test planed for the in-space phase of the flight was a propellant transfer demonstration, where liquid oxygen would be transferred from one tank inside Starship into another, a step towards vehicle-to-vehicle propellant transfer needed for Starship to go to the Moon and beyond. During this phase of the flight, SpaceX provided live video of Starship coasting above the atmosphere, slowly rolling, set to, of all things, elevator music. All seemed to be going well until the planned Raptor engine relight, which did not take place a scheduled about 40 minutes after liftoff. The engine burn was not needed to return to Earth, the company emphasized, and the company later said the engine burn was called off “due to vehicle roll rates during coast.” That roll became a bigger concern as the vehicle began reentry about five minutes later. Some tiles could be seen coming off the vehicle as it approached the upper atmosphere at nearly 27,000 kilometers per hour. Remarkably, a camera mounted on a flap continued to send high-definition video via SpaceX’s Starlink satellites as Starship plunged deeper into the atmosphere and the vehicle was enveloped in plasma. “This is the first time that we’re getting to collect this reentry data and understand how these 18,000 hexagonal heat shield tiles are working together to protect the belly of Starship,” said SpaceX’s Kate Tice on the webcast. The rolling, though, suggested that parts of the vehicle not protected by those tiles were also being exposed to the heat of reentry. Finally, about 49 minutes and 30 seconds after liftoff, video and other telemetry was lost from Starship as it descended through an altitude of 65 kilometers. Fifteen minutes later, around the time that Starship was planned to splash down in the Indian Ocean, SpaceX declared that Ship 28, the company’s designation for the vehicle, was lost. As for Super Heavy, the booster was descending towards what SpaceX called a “soft splashdown” in the Gulf of Mexico. But the vehicle appeared to lose some control in the final few kilometers of its descent. “Super Heavy successfully lit several engines for its first ever landing burn before the vehicle experienced a RUD,” SpaceX later said, using its terminology for “rapid unscheduled disassembly” or explosion. “The booster’s flight concluded at approximately 462 meters in altitude and just under seven minutes into the mission.” “To make it that far, to demonstrate the controlled reentry up to that point is pretty darn good,” Bharadvaj said shortly after the Super Heavy booster was lost. “That’s something we can learn for the next one.” Starship reentry Starship returned live video of its reentry even as it was enveloped in plasma. (credit: SpaceX) Picking up the pace Flight 3 did not achieve all its stated objectives, but clearly went further than the previous two flights. That was enough for SpaceX to declare the mission a success: “HUGE congratulations to the entire team for this incredible day,” Shotwell posted shortly after the end of the mission. NASA, whose interest in Starship is nearly as high as SpaceX’s, agreed. “Congrats to SpaceX on a successful test flight! Starship has soared into the heavens,” Bill Nelson, NASA administrator, said. That interest is from the $4 billion in contracts it awarded to SpaceX to develop lunar lander versions of Starship for its Human Landing System (HLS) program. That lander is currently scheduled to take NASA astronauts to the lunar surface for the first time since Apollo 17 on the Artemis 3 mission in late 2026. (An uncrewed demonstration, using the same architecture, is projected for late 2025.) “With each flight test, SpaceX attempts increasingly ambitious objectives for Starship to learn as much as possible for future mission systems development,” Lisa Watson-Morgan, NASA’s HLS program manager, said in a NASA statement after the launch, noting the flight “allows both NASA and SpaceX to gather crucial data needed for the continued development of Starship HLS.” “I’m very excited about the fact that we’ve got four sets of Starships and Super Heavies basically already built at Starbase, ready to go for the next flights,” said SpaceX’s Cummings. That included the propellant transfer test that took place while Starship coasted above the atmosphere. That test was part of a NASA “Tipping Point” technology demonstration award to SpaceX, and the agency said it was working with SpaceX to review the data collected, including how the propellant moved between tanks in microgravity conditions and how the vehicle could settle the propellant into the destination tank to ensure a smooth flow into the Raptor engines. “Storing and transferring cryogenic propellant in orbit has never been attempted on this scale before,” said Jeremy Kenny, manager of NASA’s Cryogenic Fluid Management Portfolio, in a statement. “But this is a game-changing technology that must be developed and matured for science and exploration missions at the Moon, Mars, and those that will venture even deeper into our solar system.” It is also, of course, a critical technology for SpaceX, since Starship’s HLS design relies on refueling in orbit in order to go to the Moon. How many launches is not clear: a SpaceX official said in January that the company expected “ten-ish” refueling launches for a Starship HLS mission (see “Twenty years of chasing the Moon”, The Space Review, January 15, 2024), while NASA officials last fall suggested the number was closer to 20. The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, in its annual report in January, pegged the number at “approximately 15.” Even if the number of refueling flights comes in the lower end of that range, it will nonetheless require a drastic shift in Starship operations by SpaceX, launching vehicles in quick succession to minimize propellant boiloff in orbit. That will, in turn, make reusability a necessity. SpaceX is preparing to accelerate flights. Even before Flight 3, Musk said that a fourth flight could take place “shortly thereafter” as the company stockpiles ships and boosters. “I’m very excited about the fact that we’ve got four sets of Starships and Super Heavies basically already built at Starbase, ready to go for the next flights,” Nick Cummings, senior director of program development at SpaceX, said at the FAA Commercial Space Transportation Conference in February. That will require support from the FAA, which said it would require SpaceX to perform a mishap investigation after last week’s flight before allowing additional launches, just as it did after the first and second flights. At the conference, Kelvin Coleman, FAA associate administrator for commercial space transportation, said approvals for subsequent launches would depend on exactly what happened with Flight 3, but added he was aware of SpaceX’s interest in increasing flight rates. “They’re looking at a pretty aggressive launch schedule this year,” he said, with “at least nine” launches proposed for 2024. “We’ll work with them to get them back going as soon as they can.” The concept of nine or more Starship launches this year is, on one hand, remarkable given the sheer scale of the vehicle. However, it’s also a reminder, like a Starship accelerating towards space, of how much faster SpaceX has to go to meet its own expectations as well as those of NASA. Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.

Book Review- The Longest Goodbye

movie poster Review: Space: The Longest Goodbye by Jeff Foust Monday, March 18, 2024 Bookmark and Share Space: The Longest Goodbye directed by Ido Mizrahy 87 minutes, not rated NASA is offering people a chance to go to Mars—or, rather, “Mars.” The agency announced last month they were accepting applications for its second year-long mission in its Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA) project. Participants, who NASA says must be “healthy, motivated U.S. citizens or permanent residents who are non-smokers, 30-55 years old, and proficient in English,” would not, of course, go to Mars, but rather spend the year in a simulated Mars habitat at the Johnson Space Center, following on the first CHAPEA mission that started last June and is scheduled to wrap up this summer. The film, especially in the second half, tried to fit in a lot of additional material that either seems extraneous or lacks detail. CHAPEA is the latest in a long line of simulated space missions by NASA and others intended to study, in part, how a small group in confined quarters can live and work together. There have been so many such simulations that some question why NASA is even doing CHAPEA. “What uncertainty exists about what’s going to happen when you lock people inside a room for a year?” asked J.S. Johnson-Schwartz, a philosophy professor and space ethicist, in a recent New York Times article that examined those studies using the ongoing CHAPEA mission as a frame. “Just because the room is painted to look like Mars doesn’t mean it’s going to change the results.” The studies of, and interest in, the effects of isolation in long-duration spaceflight continue, though, as demonstrated in the new documentary Space: The Longest Goodbye. The movie, available for rental or purchase on several platforms now and slated to broadcast on PBS in May, explores the challenges astronauts face on the International Space Station being separated from their families for half a year as part of planning for eventual longer missions to Mars, but tries to cover too much in less than 90 minutes. A key part of the film is the experience of NASA astronauts Cady Coleman and Kayla Barron, who each spent about half a year in space. Coleman flew in 2010–2011, when her son was in elementary school, and the film includes extensive clips from video conversations she had while in space with her son and husband, as well as more recent interviews with them. Barron, who previously served on submarines in the Navy, was on the ISS in 2021–2022; we don’t see as much of her outside of NASA videos (perhaps because she is still an active astronaut) but the film does interview her husband, an Army officer. Had the film stuck to those accounts and related items—like a study by NASA psychologists where ISS astronauts kept journals to keep track of the highs and lows of their stays in space—it would have done a good job highlighting the challenges of being isolated in a confined spacecraft for months at a time. But the film, especially in the second half, tried to fit in a lot of additional material: how NASA helped rescue trapped Chilean miners, the role virtual reality could play in long-duration missions, tests of a German robot called CIMON (basically a chatbot designed to float inside the station), and even whether we should just give up dealing with isolation and have the astronauts hibernate on the journey to Mars. The segments either seem extraneous or lack detail: the segment on VR, for example, suggests loved ones on Earth could transmit messages that astronauts could experience in VR, but doesn’t make clear why that would be better than a simple video message, since time delay would make interactivity impossible. “In the next decade, NASA plans to send astronauts to Mars,” it declares at the beginning, which is clearly false: NASA would be doing well to get humans to Mars by 2040. The documentary also mentions analog missions, but in a weirdly oblique way. “The following events occurred at a Mars simulation facility,” the film states. “The visuals were filmed at a similar facility, at an undisclosed location.” The events are clearly what took place on the sixth and last of the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) simulations in early 2018, which ended just a few days into an eight-month stay when one participant was electrocuted and briefly hospitalized. One of the HI-SEAS participants, Sukjin Han, is interviewed in the film, but the film never explains why they don’t give the specific details about the incident. The “undisclosed location” used for the visuals in the film appears to the Mars Society’s Mars Desert Research Station in Utah. That gives the documentary a rushed, at times sloppy, feel. “In the next decade, NASA plans to send astronauts to Mars,” it declares at the beginning, which is clearly false: NASA would be doing well to get humans to Mars by 2040. The film also depicts a lone Orion spacecraft heading to Mars, as if the crew would be cooped up inside the small capsule for the entire journey. (The sloppiness extends beyond the content of the film itself: a publicist for it emailed me at least three times to promote it, addressing me as “James.”) The concerns about isolation and confinement on a long-duration missions, to the ISS for six months or to Mars for up to three years, are clear, but not necessarily intractable, as Coleman herself suggests in a comment—or confession—about her time on the station at the end of the documentary: “If I could have spent another six months, I would have stayed in a minute.” The merits and needs of further isolation studies continue to be debated, but for those who want to get away from it all, NASA is accepting applications for the next CHAPEA mission until April 2. Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.

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The Difficult Early Life Of The Centaur Upper Stage

Centaur A Centaur V upper stage being hoisted into position to be integrated with a Vulcan rocket ahead of the Vulcan’s first launch. (credit: ULA) The difficult early life of the Centaur upper stage by Trevor Williams Monday, March 11, 2024 Bookmark and Share On January 8, the first Vulcan rocket by United Launch Alliance successfully placed the Peregrine lander on a trajectory bound for the Moon. This lander then experienced propulsion problems that prevented a lunar landing attempt, but the Vulcan had performed its task perfectly. The upper stage of the Vulcan, the Centaur V (V signifying 5, not Vulcan), is a high-energy upper stage that contributes to the Vulcan’s impressive performance for planetary missions and others. It is a greatly expanded version of the Centaur stage that has flown for more than 60 years: Vulcan was the 271st Centaur launch. However, the early phases in the development of the Centaur were distinctly rocky and did not suggest that it would become such a workhorse. In fact, problems during development severely disrupted America’s planetary mission plans, leading to none other than Wernher von Braun threatening to kill the stage. Early development of high-energy upper stages In the 1950s, the Air Force became interested in the development of upper stages that used high-energy propellant combinations [1, p. 187]. This work was initially motivated by the goal of increasing the range of ballistic missiles, but later by analyses that showed how important high-energy upper stages become when trying to put spacecraft into challenging trajectories such as geosynchronous transfer orbit or lunar and planetary transfers. Upper stages with lower efficiency propellants, such as kerosene and liquid oxygen, work well for low Earth orbit, but penalize the overall launch vehicle performance for these high-energy orbits. Problems during development severely disrupted America’s planetary mission plans, leading to none other than Wernher von Braun threatening to kill the stage. A key parameter that measures the performance of a rocket engine is its specific impulse, which is proportional to the exhaust speed of the rocket. The design choice that is most important in determining specific impulse is the fuel/oxidizer pair that the engine uses; other design parameters, notably combustion chamber pressure and nozzle area ratio, also affect it, but to a far lesser extent. Fuel and oxidizer combinations with high specific impulses that were studied in the 1950s included hydrazine/fluorine, hydrogen/fluorine, and hydrogen/oxygen. Hydrogen/fluorine showed promise, but an incident in a Lewis Research Center test chamber in May 1958 illustrated the practical problems that can result from the fact that fluorine reacts readily with virtually any material. A small leak through a stainless steel joint produced a column of fluorine that reacted “with everything in its path” [1, p. 198], including the joint, a pipe, and the water vapor in the air. This helped to reinforce the conviction of Abe Silverstein, the key NASA proponent of high-energy propulsion, that the hydrogen/oxygen combination was the preferred option. Kelly Johnson Kelly Johnson with U-2 reconnaissance aircraft. (credit: US Air Force) One apparent hurdle was the difficulty of producing and handling large quantities of liquid hydrogen. Even as late as the early 1950s, liquid hydrogen was still basically a laboratory curiosity, dealt with (carefully!) in very small quantities. However, in early 1956 Clarence “Kelly” Johnson, the legendary chief designer of the Lockheed Skunk Works, submitted a proposal to the Air Force for a supersonic successor to the U-2 spy plane: this would be propelled at over Mach 2 by a jet engine modified to operate on liquid hydrogen [2, p. 170]. This necessitated that Lockheed learn practical ways to produce and store liquid hydrogen: Johnson put Ben Rich in charge of this development. Rich soon learned that the current state of the art of operating with hydrogen was not adequate, and so Lockheed developed new approaches. The new reconnaissance aircraft design was called the CL-400, with the overall program being referred to as Suntan. Pratt & Whitney was responsible for the development of the Suntan engine: first was a J-57 turbojet modified to run on liquid hydrogen, and later the Model 304 engine. Suntan was classified at a level above Top Secret, with only 25 employees at the company being cleared to see the details. As a result of this level of classification, the total cost of Suntan is unclear: it has only been pinned down to the range $100–250 million [1, p. 165]. After further work, it became clear to the developers that the CL-400 would have an inadequate range of about 2,000 kilometers. This was a consequence of the low density of liquid hydrogen and could not even be remedied by making the aircraft larger than it already was, which was roughly the size of a baseball diamond. Consequently, Johnson told the Secretary of the Air Force “I’m building you a dog” [2, p. 177] and voluntarily pulled out of the project in 1957. A key byproduct of Suntan, though, was that the significant challenges associated with taking liquid hydrogen from a laboratory curiosity and turning it into a practical propellant that could be produced and stored in large quantities had been solved. In addition, Pratt & Whitney, a division of United Aircraft Corp., had gained significant experience in operating liquid hydrogen engines, although turbojets rather than rockets. When interest in developing high-energy rocket engines surfaced, this experience was key to the development of hydrogen/oxygen engines. (One hurdle was that, since Suntan was so highly classified, rocket developers were not initially aware of the progress that had been made.) Pratt & Whitney’s work on the modified J-57 and Model 304 turbojet engines provided a good background for their subsequent development of the RL10 hydrogen/oxygen rocket engine that was used in the Saturn I launch vehicle as well as the Centaur. Centaur vs. Saturn The Saturn I and the Centaur were developed at roughly the same time and, although the products of two very different rocket design groups, interacted quite significantly. The Saturn I came from the Army Ballistic Missile Agency at Redstone Arsenal—later becoming NASA Marshall Space Flight Center—in Huntsville, Alabama, while the Centaur was produced by the Convair Division of General Dynamics in San Diego as an Air Force project. These two groups embodied contrasting approaches to launch vehicle design. A key byproduct of Suntan, though, was that the significant challenges associated with taking liquid hydrogen from a laboratory curiosity and turning it into a practical propellant that could be produced and stored in large quantities had been solved. The Saturn I was the first step by Wernher von Braun’s team in developing the Saturn rocket family that culminated in the Saturn V lunar launcher; the Saturn IB, a modified Saturn I with different upper stage, fell in between. The Saturn I first stage, the S-I, burning kerosene and liquid oxygen, was made up of grouped, stretched tankage from their earlier Redstone and Jupiter rockets: it was sometimes jokingly referred to as “Cluster’s Last Stand” [3, p. 80]. This approach made possible rapid development but did not lend itself to structural mass efficiency. The Saturn I second stage, the S-IV, burned high-energy propellants: it was powered by six Pratt & Whitney RL10 hydrogen/oxygen engines. It had been recognized by this point that, as stated by a Douglas Aircraft Co. engineer [3, p. 162]: “The combination of hydrogen and oxygen for propellants made the moon shot feasible. Its use in upper stages results in a significant increase in performance over the propellant combinations of oxygen and kerosene then in use in first-stage boosters”. Saturn I Saturn I test flight configurations. (credit: NASA) By contrast, an underlying goal in the design of the Centaur, powered by two RL10s, was structural efficiency. It was developed by the German-American engineer Krafft Ehricke to be a second stage matched in size, mass, and design philosophy to the Atlas rocket that was designed, also at Convair, by the Belgian-American engineer Karel “Charlie” Bossart. Both used the pressurized stainless steel structure that was pioneered for the Atlas: this extremely lightweight structure did away with strengthening stringers, propellant tanks internal to the rocket skin, and so on, and gained its stiffness from internal pressurization. To protect the structure from corrosion in the humid, salty air of Cape Canaveral, it was sprayed with the 40th iteration of a “water displacement” material that was made up of various hydrocarbons: this was later sold commercially as WD-40 [4, p. 143]. Centaur Centaur stage during assembly, 1962. (credit: NASA) If the pressure inside an Atlas were lost, it could crumple under its own weight: this occurred on the launch pad several times over the years. This engendered a certain amount of friction with von Braun’s team with their very different structural design philosophy: Bossart in a 1974 interview described the structure of Saturn rockets as being “built like the Brooklyn Bridge” [4, p. 169]. An example of these disagreements took place in 1961, when key members of von Braun’s team visited Convair. Willie Mrazek, von Braun’s chief of structures, got into a disagreement with Bossart, which led to them going over to a discarded Atlas tank that was used for testing. Bossart handed Mrazek a heavy rubber-coated lead mallet and invited him to “whack” the Atlas, to see if he could damage it. As described in [4, pp. 169–170]: Mrazek gave it a tap and checked to see if the metal was dented. “No, Willie, belt it!” He hit it harder, and Charlie urged, “Willie, stop fiddling around. Hit the damned thing!” This time, Mrazek gave it a strong blow, and the hammer bounced off the stiff metal surface and flew out of his grip, knocking his glasses off and landing 15 feet away. Muttering German curses under his breath, he inspected the tank and still could not find any sign of a dent. Another engineer who had a similar “hit the tank” experience was James Fletcher, who at the time worked at Ramo-Wooldridge and later went on to serve twice as NASA administrator. He “thought he might do more damage by hitting the tank with a glancing blow, but instead he sprained his wrist” [4, p. 132]. people Wernher von Braun, Karel Bossart, and Krafft Ehricke. (credit: NASA) Krafft Ehricke had worked at Peenemunde from 1942 to 1944 under von Braun, after serving in Panzers and being wounded twice. Although he credited his transfer to Peenemunde for saving his life, he did not really see eye-to-eye with von Braun, at least partially because Ehricke was enthusiastic about the use of hydrogen as a fuel and von Braun was deeply skeptical. Even so, Ehricke rejoined von Braun under Operation Paperclip, first at Fort Bliss, Texas, from 1947 to 1950, then in Huntsville from 1950 to 1952. He then left to work at Bell Aircraft in 1952 to 1954 and joined Convair in 1954. There he initiated the project to develop the Centaur as a high-energy upper stage sized to turn the Atlas into a highly capable space launcher, although it has been said that he was stronger as a visionary than as a manager [5, p. 380]. Centaur was initially an Air Force project but was transferred to NASA when it was created in 1959. Huntsville (i.e. NASA Marshall) was put in charge, which was not a recipe for success given von Braun’s resistance to the use of pressurized tanks and liquid hydrogen. In fact, in February 1962, after further Centaur delays caused by bad wiring, von Braun wrote in a note to Kurt Debus: “I’m about ready to suggest to blow up the whole darn project.” [5, p. 380]. Effects of Centaur delays on planetary missions Meanwhile, the problems encountered in the development of the Centaur were having severe effects on planning for interplanetary missions. NASA Headquarters and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) began in early 1960 mapping out what became the Mariner series of spacecraft to explore Venus, Mars, and Mercury. Assuming that the Atlas-Centaur would be ready in time, this plan started with a large (885-kilogram) “Mariner B” spacecraft performing a Venus flyby in 1962 [6, p. 34]. Unfortunately, though, several explosions of Centaurs in ground tests in 1960 and early 1961 made clear that the proposed timeline was not going to be possible. In addition, the payload capability of the early Atlas-Centaurs was found to be lower than previously predicted. In February 1962, after further Centaur delays caused by bad wiring, von Braun wrote in a note to Kurt Debus: “I’m about ready to suggest to blow up the whole darn project.” Consequently, the 1962 Venus flyby was revised over the course of only 11 months [6, p. 40] to use a lighter (204-kilogram) spacecraft launched on the smaller Atlas-Agena launch vehicle. Since this spacecraft was a stripped-down development of the 367-kilogram lunar Rangers that were also launched on Atlas-Agenas, with mass reduced to allow an interplanetary mission, it was termed internally the “Mariner-R” while, externally, it was called Mariner 2. It performed the first successful flyby of another planet in December 1962, determining the extremely high temperature of the surface of Venus. The subsequent Mariner 4 and 5 (“Mariner C”) spacecraft were also launched on Atlas-Agenas until the Atlas-Centaur was ready for use from Mariner 6 onwards. The Agena upper stage was originally developed as a key component of the CORONA reconnaissance satellite [7, p. 34]. It was considerably smaller than the Centaur, and with lower performance: it had a diameter of 1.5 meters (5 feet) rather than 3 meters (10 feet), a propellant mass less than half that of the Centaur, and a specific impulse only about two thirds the Centaur value as a result of its use of hypergolic propellants (hydrazine and nitric acid) rather than hydrogen/oxygen. Consequently, the performance of the Atlas-Agena for planetary missions was much lower than that of the Atlas-Centaur. Ranger and Mariner Ranger 7 lunar probe and Mariner 2 Venus probe (“Mariner-R”), both launched by Atlas-Agena. (credit: NASA) Agena and Centaur Atlas-Agena (left) and Atlas-Centaur (right). Note the different sizes of the two upper stages relative to the Atlas. (Credit: NASA) In response to the Centaur development delays, Marshall in September 1962 proposed replacing the Atlas-Centaur for planetary missions with a Saturn I equipped with an Agena third stage [6, p. 48]. At this point, it appeared likely that the Saturn I would make it to orbit before the Atlas-Centaur, so this replacement was expected to save time. Original plans for the Saturn I had included using a slightly modified version of the Centaur [3, p. 159] as a third stage, termed the S-V, although this was only ever flown in dummy form, with water-filled tanks, on the first four suborbital launches. The proposal to add an Agena was therefore somewhat in keeping with the original plans. It appeared acceptable to JPL, but NASA Headquarters vetoed it. Instead, Centaur management was transferred to NASA Lewis Research Center, the director of which was the hydrogen/oxygen proponent Abe Silverstein. It is interesting to note that, while a Saturn I-Agena would have had a payload capability roughly equivalent to that of the Atlas-Centaur for planetary missions, it would have had a launch mass nearly four times as great. This inefficiency is a reflection of its much less capable upper stage. A modern parallel exists in the Space Launch System (SLS): its current upper stage, the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage, is essentially a Delta IV five-meter-diameter upper stage, and is smaller than optimal for a launch vehicle of this size. It is to be replaced by the Exploration Upper Stage, with nearly ten times the propellant mass, which will increase the trans-lunar injection payload capability by about 40%. Centaur success The transfer of Centaur management to NASA Lewis was a key turning point in the development of the Centaur. The first Atlas-Centaur test launch, on May 8, 1962, was a failure, but the first under Lewis management, carrying no payload, succeeded on November 27, 1963. Interestingly, the Atlas-Centaur ended up beating the Saturn I to orbit: this only took place on January 29, 1964. Several other Atlas-Centaur failures followed, but its first key operational use, to launch the seven Surveyor lunar landers in 1966 to 1968, was entirely successful. The transfer of Centaur management to NASA Lewis was a key turning point in the development of the Centaur. Following this, the Atlas-Centaur became increasingly used for communication satellites (e.g. Intelsat 4s), astronomy satellites (e.g. OAO-2 and HEAOs 1-3), and finally Mariners 6 through 10. By way of a performance comparison, the Mariner 2 spacecraft to Venus, launched on an Atlas-Agena, had a mass of only 204 kilograms; Mariner 10, a mission to Venus and then Mercury that was launched on an Atlas-Centaur, had a mass of 503 kilograms. Pioneer 10 to Jupiter and Pioneer 11 to Jupiter and then Saturn were also launched on Atlas-Centaurs, as were the Pioneer Venus Orbiter and Multiprobe. The Centaur was then adapted for use on other launch vehicles, for instance the Titan IIIEs used to launch Vikings 1 and 2 and Voyagers 1 and 2. Convair (by then General Dynamics) designed a stretched Centaur to launch spacecraft for the proposed Grand Tour of the outer planets [8, pp. 31-33]: the proposed design is somewhat reminiscent of the Centaur G-Prime version that was at one point planned to launch the Galileo Jupiter probe. There was also a proposal for a Centaur space tug to supplement the Space Shuttle [8, pp. 33-35]. Mariner 10 Mariner 10 Venus probe launched by Atlas-Centaur. (Credit: NASA) A total of 271 Centaurs have been launched to date, with the latest Centaur V version for the Vulcan containing nearly four times the propellant mass of the original Centaur. And, unlike the Atlas, which changed to a design with stiffeners for the Atlas V version, the Centaur V still has pressurized tanks. References Liquid Hydrogen as a Propulsion Fuel, 1945-1959, J.L. Sloop, The NASA History Series, SP-4404, 1978. Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of my Years at Lockheed, B.R. Rich and L. Janos, Little, Brown and Company, 1994. Stages to Saturn: A Technological History of the Apollo/Saturn Launch Vehicles, R.E. Bilstein, The NASA History Series, SP-4206, 1980. Bossart: America’s Forgotten Rocket Scientist, D.P. Mitchell, Mitchell Publishing, 2016. Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War, M.J. Neufeld, Vintage Books, 2007. On Mars: Exploration of the Red Planet, 1958-1978, E.C. Ezell and L.N. Ezell, The NASA History Series, SP-4212, 1984. Eye in the Sky: The Story of the Corona Spy Satellites, ed. D.A. Day, J.M. Logsdon and B. Latell, Smithsonian Institution, 1998. Centaur, General Dynamics Convair Aerospace Division booklet, Jan. 1971. Trevor Williams in an orbital dynamicist who grew up following the Apollo missions, and has long been fascinated by space history.

India Introduces Its First Four Garganyaan Astronauts

astronauts Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi greets the four Gaganyaan astronauts at a February 27 event. (credit: Press Information Bureau) India unveils its first set of Gaganyaan astronauts by Jatan Mehta Monday, March 11, 2024 Bookmark and Share After four years of secrecy, the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on February 27 the first four astronauts selected to fly on the country’s initial set of human spaceflight missions mid-decade via ISRO’s ambitious Gaganyaan program. The selectees are all test pilots and Group Captains: Prashanth Nair, Angad Prathap, Ajit Krishnan, and Shubhanshu Shukla. They have received extensive training in India and Russia, and at least one of them will receive advanced training in the US at NASA facilities sometime this year. The announcement of Gaganyaan astronauts is a great time to review India’s progress in putting people in space. With Gaganyaan, India aims to send its people to space using its own rockets, capsules, and associated technologies. India hopes to clinch this Yuri Gagarin moment of its own by end of 2025, but delays are expected. But first, where are the women astronauts? When asked, ISRO says women aren’t in this astronaut batch because being a test pilot was a key requirement, and India had no female test pilots at the time of selection. Well, that might be true, but India does have the highest global percentage of female airline pilots. The fighter pilot number is increasing, too. More firmly, Susmita Mohanty convincingly argues in a piece for The Print how the arbitrary selection criteria doesn’t hold water when compared to initial female astronaut selections worldwide. I agree when Mohanty says: “We have missed a great opportunity as a nation. We could have created history.” For the benefit of global readers, here’s a brief primer on Indians that have already been to space. Rakesh Sharma was the first Indian to visit Earth orbit, where he spent seven days in 1984 aboard the Soviet Salyut 7 space station. Kalpana Chawla, the first Indian woman in space, held a US citizenship when she flew in 1997 on the Space Shuttle Columbia, the same vehicle Chawla was aboard in 2003, too, but which was destroyed during atmospheric reentry, killing Chawla and her crewmates. Sunita Williams is an Indian-origin but US-born astronaut who is set to fly to the International Space Station again this year aboard the first crewed Starliner flight by Boeing as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew program. With Gaganyaan, India aims to send its people to space using its own rockets, capsules, and associated technologies. The first crewed Gaganyaan flight will carry no more than two of the four aforementioned astronauts to a 400-kilometer low Earth orbit, where they will spend three days in the Crew Module. If successful, India will then be only the world’s fourth nation to indigenously send humans to space, after Russia, the US, and China. India hopes to clinch this Yuri Gagarin moment of its own by end of 2025, but delays are expected. India’s crawls and leaps toward indigenous human spaceflight For well over a decade, ISRO had been inching towards some baseline technologies necessary to even plan such a massive feat, despite roadblocks and delayed funding. The Indian government finally formally green-lit the human spaceflight program in 2018. Progress on technological components has been faster ever since, with 2022 featuring a successful integrated parachute test demonstrating safe capsule splashdown in the event one of the three main chutes failed to open. More parachute tests followed last year, including tests specific to drogue chutes. For well over a decade, ISRO had been inching towards some baseline technologies necessary to even plan such a massive feat, despite roadblocks and delayed funding. In February 2023, ISRO began practicing sea recovery trials with a representative crew module, which simulates the mass, center of gravity, size, and externals of the actual Crew Module. In April 2023, ISRO completed human-rating the liquid-fueled Vikas engine after an extensive test period of three years, demonstrating higher structural margins, better health monitoring, off-nominal recoveries, and redundancy in many of its associated systems. Two Vikas engines power the core stage of the Launch Vehicle Mark III (LVM3), India’s most powerful rocket and the vehicle of choice for sending astronauts to space. Likewise in February 2024, ISRO completed human-rating LVM3’s CE-20 cryogenic upper stage engine after a comprehensive set of 39 engine tests. In May 2023, ISRO qualified the Crew Module’s propulsion system, which will provide controlled atmospheric descent to complete each Gaganyaan flight and bring astronauts back home. In case of an abnormal launch, the same system will keep the crew module stable between a height of 3 to 70 kilometers. In July 2023, ISRO successfully tested the Service Module’s propulsion system (video), which features five 440-newton engines and 16 100-newton reaction control thrusters. During Gaganyaan missions, it’s the service module that will inject astronauts in the Crew Module into orbit, circularize it to a 400-kilometer altitude and maintain it, and eventually provide the deorbit maneuver for the crew module before separating from it. abort test Launch of a representative Gaganyaan crew module and its attached escape system on October 21, 2023 for an abort test. (credit: ISRO) ISRO then conducted a successful abort test in October 2023, which means the crew escape system can safely carry astronauts away from the launch vehicle in the case of an emergency. S. V. Krishna Chaitanya has reported that ISRO’s next step is to better test aspects of the crew module’s parachute system by dropping a representative module from an altitude of four kilometers using a heavy-lift helicopter. This will be followed by another abort test where the escape system will lift the module away while the rocket is on the launchpad itself to simulate pad emergencies. ISRO did conduct one such test in 2018 but this redo is necessary because there have been substantial design changes to Gaganyaan since. Growing scope and international interest As part of an unprecedented set of broad-sweeping India-US agreements in 2023 centered around collaborative science and technology advancements, NASA will carry one of the four aforementioned Indian astronauts to the International Space Station later this year. NASA and private US companies have also shown interest in leveraging parts of Gaganyaan’s technology stack for a post-ISS future. Chethan Kumar reported last year that Blue Origin and ISRO are interested in using LVM3 to launch crew capsules to service Blue Origin’s upcoming commercial space station, Orbital Reef. Voyager Space announced similar intentions last year for its upcoming Starlab commercial space station, for which it has partnered with Airbus. NASA and private US companies have also shown interest in leveraging parts of Gaganyaan’s technology stack for a post-ISS future. The Indian government directed ISRO in October 2023 to create an Indian Space Station in Earth orbit by 2035, and even send the first Indian to the Moon by 2040. To realize these ambitions, the Indian Department of Space (DOS) and ISRO are developing a roadmap for crewed and lunar exploration, which will comprise an orbital module before the space station, a series of Chandrayaan missions, the development of a partially reusable Next Generation Launch Vehicle (NGLV), and more. roadmap Screengrab of a notional integrated lunar and crewed exploration roadmap for India. (credit: S. Somanath / ISRO) Despite India’s increasingly complex human spaceflight and planetary exploration ambitions for later this decade and early next, the fiscal year (FY) 2024–25 budget for its Department of Space (DOS)—which includes ISRO’s activities—improved only marginally from $1.51 billion last year to $1.58 billion; even if it may be the interim budget with the national election coming up. Notably, DOS underutilized its space technology budget in FY 2023–24 by about $150 million, a trait the country’s Ministry of Science & Technology as a whole suffers from. As Mukunth points out in a post, this is but the latest example illustrating that increasing ISRO’s budget alone isn’t a solution in itself for continuing advances in space. Separately, as part of the broader national budget announcement, India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the availability of $12 billion dollars in interest-free loans over 50 years for Indian tech startups, including space ones, to tap into. A version of this article was published by the author in his Indian Space Progress newsletter. Jatan Mehta is a science writer passionate about space exploration and the Moon. He was the former science officer at TeamIndus Moon Mission. His portfolio can be found at jatan.space.

The Psychological Challenges Of A Long Voyage To Mars

The psychological challenges of a long voyage to Mars by Nick Kanas Monday, March 11, 2024 Bookmark and Share The Conversation Within the next few decades, NASA aims to land humans on the Moon, set up a lunar base, and use the lessons learned to send people to Mars as part of its Artemis program. Delayed contact with home won’t just hurt crew member morale. It will likely mean space crews won’t get as much real-time help from Mission Control during onboard emergencies. While researchers know that space travel can stress space crew members both physically and mentally and test their ability to work together in close quarters, missions to Mars will amplify these challenges. Mars is far away—millions of miles from Earth—and a mission to the Red Planet will take from two to two and a half years, including travel time and the Mars surface exploration itself. As a psychiatrist who has studied space crewmember interactions in orbit, I’m interested in the stressors that will occur during a Mars mission and how to mitigate them for the benefit of future space travelers. Delayed communications Given the great distance to Mars, two-way communication between crew members and Earth will take about 25 minutes round trip. This delayed contact with home won’t just hurt crew member morale. It will likely mean space crews won’t get as much real-time help from Mission Control during onboard emergencies. Because these communications travel at the speed of light and can’t go any faster, experts are coming up with ways to improve communication efficiency under time-delayed conditions. These solutions might include texting, periodically summarizing topics, and encouraging participants to ask questions at the end of each message, which the responder can answer during the next message. Autonomous conditions Space crew members won’t be able to communicate with Mission Control in real time to plan their schedules and activities, so they’ll need to conduct their work more autonomously than astronauts working on orbit on the International Space Station. Although studies during space simulations on Earth have suggested that crew members can still accomplish mission goals under highly autonomous conditions, researchers need to learn more about how these conditions affect crew member interactions and their relationship with Mission Control. For example, Mission Control personnel usually advise crew members on how to deal with problems or emergencies in real time. That won’t be an option during a Mars mission. To study this challenge back on Earth, scientists could run a series of simulations where crew members have varying degrees of contact with Mission Control. They could then see what happens to the interactions between crew members and their ability to get along and conduct their duties productively. Crew member tension Being confined with a small group of people for a long period of time can lead to tension and interpersonal strife. In my research team’s studies of on-orbit crews, we found that when experiencing interpersonal stress in space, crew members might displace this tension by blaming Mission Control for scheduling problems or not offering enough support. This can lead to crew-ground misunderstandings and hurt feelings. One way to deal with interpersonal tension on board would be to schedule time each week for the crew members to discuss interpersonal conflicts during planned “bull sessions.” We have found that commanders who are supportive can improve crew cohesion. A supportive commander, or someone trained in anger management, could facilitate these sessions to help crew members understand their interpersonal conflicts before their feelings fester and harm the mission. Time away from home Spending long periods of time away from home can weigh on crew members’ morale in space. Astronauts miss their families and report being concerned about the well-being of their family members back on Earth, especially when someone is sick or in a crisis. Researchers could simulate the outbound and return phases of a Mars mission by sending astronauts to Gateway for six-month periods, where they could introduce Mars-like delayed communication, autonomy, and views of a receding Earth. Mission duration can also affect astronauts. A Mars mission will have three phases: the outbound trip, the stay on the Martian surface, and the return home. Each of these phases may affect crew members differently. For example, the excitement of being on Mars might boost morale, while boredom during the return may sink it. The “disappearing Earth” phenomenon For astronauts in orbit, seeing the Earth from space serves as a reminder that their home, family, and friends aren’t too far away. But for crew members traveling to Mars, watching as the Earth shrinks to an insignificant dot in the heavens could result in a profound sense of isolation and homesickness. Having telescopes on board that will allow the crew members to see Earth as a beautiful ball in space, or giving them access to virtual reality images of trees, lakes, and family members, could help mitigate any disappearing-Earth effects. But these countermeasures could just as easily lead to deeper depression as the crew members reflect on what they’re missing. Planning for a Mars mission Researchers studied some of these issues during the Mars500 program, a collaboration between the Russian and other space agencies. During Mars500, six men were isolated for 520 days in a space simulator in Moscow. They underwent periods of delayed communication and autonomy, and they simulated a landing on Mars. Scientists learned a lot from that simulation. But many features of a real Mars mission, such as microgravity, and some dangers of space—meteoroid impacts, the disappearing-Earth phenomenon—aren’t easy to simulate. Planned missions under the Artemis program will allow researchers to learn more about the pressures astronauts will face during the journey to Mars. For example, NASA is planning a space station called Gateway, which will orbit the Moon and serve as a relay station for lunar landings and a mission to Mars. Researchers could simulate the outbound and return phases of a Mars mission by sending astronauts to Gateway for six-month periods, where they could introduce Mars-like delayed communication, autonomy, and views of a receding Earth. Researchers could simulate a Mars exploration on the Moon by having astronauts conduct tasks like those anticipated for Mars. This way, crew members could better prepare for the psychological and interpersonal pressures that come with a real Mars mission. These simulations could improve the chances of a successful mission and contribute to astronaut well-being as they venture into space. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Nick Kanas is Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. For more than 50 years he has written about space psychology and psychiatry. He has been the principal investigator of several NASA-funded and ESA-sponsored international psychological research projects involving astronauts and cosmonauts in space. He received the Aerospace Medical Association Raymond F. Longacre Award for Outstanding Accomplishment in the Psychological and Psychiatric Aspects of Aerospace Medicine in 1999 and the International Academy of Astronautics Life Science Award in 2008. Note: we are now moderating comments. There will be a delay in posting comments and no guarantee that all submitted comments will be posted.

Book Review-The New World On Mars

movie poster Review: The New World on Mars by Jeff Foust Monday, March 11, 2024 Bookmark and Share The New World on Mars: What We Can Create on the Red Planet by Robert Zubrin Diversion Books, 2024 hardcover, 320 pp., illus. ISBN 978-1-63576-880-0 US$28.99 As soon as this Thursday, SpaceX will launch its Starship/Super Heavy vehicle on its third integrated test flight, after launches last April and November. On this flight SpaceX hopes, beyond avoiding the explosive ends of those earlier flights, to test a payload bay door and transfer propellant within Starship, key capabilities needed for that vehicle’s early missions to launch Starlink satellites and land humans on the Moon for NASA. There are, in his view, no technological showstoppers to establishing human settlements on Mars. However, the company has made clear that Starship’s long-term goal is to send humans to Mars, and in large numbers, fulfilling founder Elon Musk’s desire to make humanity multiplanetary. While Musk frequently talks about those visions, like having a million-person city on Mars by mid-century, he’s said little about how those people would live or what they would do there, considering them as minor details to be left to others. In steps Robert Zubrin, who has been thinking about how to both get humans to Mars and how they could live there for decades. In The New World on Mars, he is willing to let SpaceX do the driving to get to Mars, focusing instead on aspects of life on Mars from building habitats to social and governance structures. The first part of the book is focused on technological aspects of living on Mars: getting there, building places to live, growing food, and producing energy, among other things. Zubrin shares extensive details on all those areas, from calculations involving the rocket equation to formulae for producing critical chemicals. There are, in his view, no technological showstoppers to establishing human settlements on Mars. What is so compelling about Mars—a world that makes the most inhospitable places on Earth seem like the Garden of Eden—that would drive people to live there, beyond saying that you’re living on Mars? The second part of the book moves from the physical sciences to the social sciences, examining how people would live in these communities and how they would be governed. He shows a libertarian bent in these pages, contemplating societies that do away with many of the laws and regulations that he believes binds us today. It is, though, at other times a little more reactionary: he envisions Martian society discarding views of “romantic relationships being a form of self-realization, recreation, or game” in favor of “finding the right partner for a lifetime project of raising a family.” In this world, divorce would be “frowned upon” and those who cause it potentially penalized by law—not all laws are going away in this libertarian society—and women being rewarded through reduced tax rates for each child they give birth to, while encouraging them to stay in the workforce. (Implicit in this section of the book is that marriage on Mars would be a strictly heterosexual institution.) For all the discussion of how people would live on Mars, there’s far less about what they would do. What is so compelling about Mars—a world that makes the most inhospitable places on Earth seem like the Garden of Eden—that would drive people to live there, beyond saying that you’re living on Mars? Zubrin, as he has stated in the past, suggests that the biggest export from Mars, at least in the early eras of settlement there, will be intellectual property: inventions that the Martian inhabitants develop to survive given limited labor and resources. While an intriguing idea, without knowing what those inventions are and their value it’s hard to build a business case for a Mars settlement. The other concepts he includes, such as producing luxury items, tourism, or providing suppliers for main belt asteroid miners, also seem either insufficient or only viable in the long term. Zubrin makes clear in the book that he is not backing Musk’s grandiose plan of a million-person Mars city in three decades: he estimates it will take more than a century and a half to reach that population level through a combination of childbirth and immigration, adding that the population would likely be spread among many cities rather than a single Martian-tropolis. Yet, as the book demonstrates, both are driven by a vision of a substantial human presence on Mars, one that is backed by science and technology. Those who share that vision will find The New World on Mars reaffirming. Those who don’t may come away from the book seeing how people could live on Mars, but less convinced why one would want to go. Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.

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A North Korean Satellite Starts Showing Signs of Life

Malligyong Kim Jong Un and his daughter visiting a Malligyong assemblage facility in May 2023. A Malligyong satellite (or mock-up thereof) can be seen in the background (credit: KCNA) A North Korean satellite starts showing signs of life by Marco Langbroek Monday, March 4, 2024 Bookmark and Share Three and a half months ago, on November 21, 2023, North Korea launched its first military reconnaissance satellite, Malligyong 1. A Chollima-1 rocket launched from Sohae inserted Malligyong-1 (international designator: 2023-179A) into a Sun-synchronous orbit of 512 by 493 kilometers and an inclination of 97.4 degrees. Within days of the launch, North Korea claimed that the satellite is taking imagery of targets of interest. But as was the case with its two “civilian” predecessors, Kwangmyŏngsŏng 3-2 and Kwangmyŏngsŏng 4, suggestions have been made by western sources that the satellite, although it successfully reached orbit, was nevertheless non-functional. As recently as a February 26 press conference, South-Korean Defense minister Shin Won-sik still maintained that “it is not showing any signs of performing tasks or engaging in reconnaissance activities.” That remark did not age well, and it looks like Shin Won-sik’s staff had not kept him well informed in the days leading up to the press conference. Because a week earlier, starting on February 19, Malligyong-1 had started to show some unambiguous signs of life. Between February 19 and February 24, it performed five consecutive small orbit raising maneuvers, one each day, as shown by tracking data from the US military space tracking network CSpOC. diagram A diagram showing the evolution of apogee and perigee altitudes for Malligyong-1 since launch late November 2023, based on US tracking data. Note the stepwise raise in perigee altitude on the right in the diagram. The series of small maneuvers raised the perigee altitude (the lowest point in its elliptical orbit) by nine kilometers, from 488 to 497 kilometers. In the process, it also circularized the orbit, reducing the orbital eccentricity to half the former value. The net effect was that the average orbital altitude was raised to 503 kilometers, the initial value from November 2023, correcting for all orbital altitude lost since then, and that the daily precession of the ascending node (which had been slightly growing over time) was reduced to a value closer to the ideal value of 0.986 degrees/day, in order to preserve the Sun-synchronous character of the orbit. The latter is important for an optical reconnaissance satellite: Sun-synchronous basically means that the satellite will pass over a certain spot on Earth at roughly the same time each day, which makes it more easy to compare images taken on different days for any changes in the surveyed areas. diagram A diagram showing the change in average orbital altitude. The orbit raise late February brought the orbital altitude back to its original value of 503 kilometers. diagram A diagram showing the rate of RAAN (ascending node) precession. The orbit raise and circularization late February lowered the rate to a value closer to the ideal sun-synchronous value of 0.986 deg/day. Malligyong-1 maneuvering to raise its orbit is kind of a big deal. First, it shows that the satellite is not “dead,” unlike some western sources suggested, but functional—with the caveat that we do not know whether the onboard camera is actually taking images. Second, it underlines that the North Koreans have clear control over the satellite, including its attitude, and can modify its orbit. While this in and of itself might not seem to be a big feat, it is for North Korea, and pushes back against western efforts to downplay the technological advances North Korea is making in its space program. It seems counterintuitive that a country, impoverished to the point where its citizens go without electricity and lack food, can build and launch functioning satellites, but clearly North Korea can. A third implication of the demonstrated capacity to maneuver is that North Korea can now actively prolong the orbital lifetime of their satellites by doing periodic orbit raises. Their previous two satellites, KMS 3-2 and KMS 4, had an orbital lifetime of 12 and 8 years, respectively: due to natural orbital decay, their orbital altitudes progressively got lower and lower until the satellites both reentered into the atmosphere in 2023. With Malligyong-1’s capacity to raise its orbit, they can now postpone that process, and prolong operational value at an operationally meaningful altitude, as long as the satellite has fuel left on board. This is the first time that a North Korean satellite has shown the ability to do orbital maneuvers, and to many analysts (including me) this ability comes as a bit of a surprise. It serves as a warning and wakeup call. There is a tendency among certain western pundits to routinely underestimate the technological level of North Korea’s ballistic missile and satellite programs. It seems counterintuitive that a country, impoverished to the point where its citizens go without electricity and lack food, can build and launch functioning satellites, but clearly North Korea can. To North Korea’s leadership, the missile and space program is vital for regime survival and hence gets a strong priority in funding. Marco Langbroek is a satellite tracker from the Netherlands, and Lecturer in Space Situational Awareness at Delft Technical University. He can be reached at sattrackcam@langbroek.org.

Taking Stock Of The US Space Program

Vulcan The first Vulcan Centaur launched in January, one sign of the strength of the US space program even as it has weaknesses elsewhere. (credit: ULA) Taking stock of the US space program by Namrata Goswami Monday, March 4, 2024 Bookmark and Share In 2023, a paradigmatic shift occurred regarding government space programs that was perhaps missed by the global space community. Euroconsult’s 2023 Government Space Program report highlighted that shift: defense-related space expenditures ($59 billion) exceeded civil space budgets ($58 billion) in 2023 for the first time. According to Euroconsult, this change reflects leading space nations intensifying their defense-related space investments informed by global space competition and national security aspects of space. I have written about how both China and India are developing their defense-related space capabilities and making long-term plans for space resource utilization. There was a recognition in the State Department document that space systems contribute to US critical infrastructure and that the growth of the commercial space sector and multiple nations investing in space renders space a vital component of US diplomatic efforts. Given this shift, this is a good time to take stock of where the US is headed in its space program. In 2023, the US space program led the world with a budget of $73 billion, followed by China with $14 billion, Japan ($4 billion), France ($3 billion), Russia ($3 billion), and India ($1.66 billion). The US space program is one of the longest-established and has developed some important new attributes in the post-Cold War period. This article highlights and explains some of those developments. The article also identifies some missed opportunities for the US space program and some delays in important space missions. Policy and strategy One of the most notable recent policies was the US State Department’s Strategic Framework for Space Diplomacy, the first such document issued by the State Department, in May 2023. The framework asserted US leadership in space and its intention to build partnerships with like-minded countries and allies. There was a recognition in the document that space systems contribute to US critical infrastructure and that the growth of the commercial space sector and multiple nations investing in space renders space a vital component of US diplomatic efforts. In the document, China and Russia were deemed national security concerns with their development of counterspace capabilities and efforts to undermine US and allied security in space. The Strategic Framework is built on the 2020 National Space Policy issued by the Trump Administration and the 2021 Space Priorities Framework issued by the Biden Administration. This was supported by the December 2023 White House guidance on Strengthening US-International Space Partnerships, including direction for the US Space Force (USSF) to strengthen its global partnerships. An example of such a USSF effort is the US Space Command’s Global Sentinel Marquee exercise held in February 2024, which focused on security cooperation and collaboration with partner nations in the domain of space. India and Mexico attended the last two days of the exercise as observers. In March 2023, the White House issued the National Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Research and Development Strategy, emphasizing the importance of building an LEO National Laboratory to promote data sharing and sustainable development of LEO, support the development of “commercial LEO constellations” specifically to answer scientific questions like the long-term radiation exposure on both humans and microelectronics as well as issues related to microgravity, vacuum exposure and space weather. The LEO strategy was the first US government document to suggest that “understanding the effects of solar and galactic radiation on both humans and microelectronics is necessary to achieve the goal of enabling human transportation and settlement within the solar system.” The LEO strategy also confirmed the US decision taken on December 31, 2021, to extend the International Space Station (ISS) to 2030. Of critical note is the fact that the US is pushing to transition from the ISS to US LEO commercial platforms, supported by US commercial launch systems. Earlier in November 2022, the White House released the first National Cislunar Science and Technology Strategy that recognized the Earth-Moon system beyond geosynchronous orbit as important for US space strategy. This in effect, as per NASA estimates, will see human activity, that will far exceed historic activity in this region. The Cislunar Strategy document stated that the “U.S. government organizations will leverage collaborations with private entities to enable capabilities for large-scale ISRU and advanced manufacturing at the Moon, consistent with the U.S. National Strategy for In-space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing.” In December 2022, the White House released the National In-Space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing (Implementation) plan, specifically viewing these activities as areas of interest and growth for the US commercial space sector. In this regard, since regulation will be a key issue, the White House released in December 2023, the United States Novel Space Activities Authorization and Supervision Framework, in which, the Department of Commerce and Transportation would be given further authority to regulate space activities in keeping with US Outer Space Treaty (OST) obligations. The Office of Space Commerce within the Department of Commerce also sought an increased budget. However, the Department of Commerce website carries a rather critical appraisal regarding the current state of government regulation of space commerce, The scientific discoveries resulting from space exploration have created new industries and technologies that improve our lives, our economy, and our national security. Technological advancement of commercial space activities has created profitable opportunities. However, current government regulations are an impediment to the commercial space sector. We will advocate for the industry to ensure the United States remains the leader in space commerce. The US Department of Defense (DoD) also issued policy and strategy documents. In August 2022, the DoD released its Directive 3100.10 titled “Space Policy”. The purpose of that document was to establish “policy and assigns responsibilities for DoD space-related activities in accordance with the National Space Policy, the U.S. Space Priorities Framework, the National Defense Strategy, the Defense Space Strategy, and U.S. law, including Titles 10, 50, and 51, United States Code (U.S.C.).” The DoD stated that it recognized space as a priority domain of national military power, and its contribution to joint military operations. However, according to open source articles, the 133 US commercial space companies that provide services to the DoD do not have automatic protection provided by SPACECOM and would require the Secretary of Defense and the President to approve SPACECOM’s protection of commercial space satellites. In March 2023, General B. Chance Saltzman, Chief of Space Operations of the Space Force, revealed his “theory of success”, termed competitive endurance, that works around three lines of effort: fielding combat-ready forces (first mover advantage), building the Space Guardian spirit, and partnering to win. Given the unique nature of the space domain and the issue of space debris, as per Saltzman, a strategy based on operational overwhelming force might not work in the space domain. In August 2023, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), and the US Space Command (SPACECOM) signed an agreement titled Commercial Space Protection Tri-Seal Strategic Framework, the first of its kind, “to enable the protection of commercial remote sensing space assets vital to the nation’s intelligence collection mission.” The rationale behind this agreement is that DoD and US intelligence rely heavily on commercial satellites for their resilience, especially because of the unclassified nature of commercial satellite imagery that can be easily shared with allies and partners. The Russia-Ukraine conflict vindicated this aspect. Adversaries might attempt to deter or damage those commercial capabilities. Consequently, government-contracted commercial imagery companies must inform the three agencies (NRO, NGA, and SPACECOM) of any threats they perceive. However, according to open source articles, the 133 US commercial space companies that provide services to the DoD do not have automatic protection provided by SPACECOM and would require the Secretary of Defense and the President to approve SPACECOM’s protection of commercial space satellites. In response to China and Russia’s counter-space capabilities, the Space Force has also issued a Proliferated LEO (pLEO) Strategy and awarded contracts to 16 US space companies to develop such pLEO capabilities. According to the Space Systems Command (SSC), this multiple-contract model was the first-of-its-kind government satellite communications procurement model. As Clare Hopper, Chief of SSC’s Commercial Satellite Communications Office, put it, “this is a transformational strategy that will allow government and industry to partner more quickly and more broadly to take advantage of the rapid innovation that’s happening in the Commercial SATCOM sector.” The idea of proliferating such services in LEO is part of the DoD’s strategy of building resilience to the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) in LEO with thousands of satellites, something that would prove difficult for adversaries to take down. In August 2023, the Department of the Air Force submitted a Report to Congressional Committees on the Space Force’s Comprehensive Strategy, including its capability to maintain and assert US ability to utilize space without interference from adversary nations’ counterspace capabilities. The strategy identified that the Space Force must ensure freedom of access and operation in space. In September 2023, the Space Force issued a new mission statement: “secure our Nation’s interests in, from, and to space.” While to secure meant that the Space Force was formed to contest and control the space domain, the nation’s interest meant protecting the security and prosperity that the US derives from space as well as securing US space assets from counter space threats. In September 2023, in response to “Fiscal Year 2022 NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act] requirement for a Space Policy Review and the Fiscal Year 2023 NDAA requirement to make publicly available an unclassified strategy for the protection and defense of on-orbit assets”, the DoD released its Space Policy Review and Strategy on Protection of Satellites. The DoD noted the importance of securing critical space-based missions, building resilient structures, and defending US government space systems against counter-space threats. The question of defending US commercial space assets is still an open debate. Doctrine The Space Force released an updated Space Force Doctrine 2.0 focused on Intelligence in July 2023. The doctrine reiterated the importance of space power to the US, how military space power would be employed, and developing multi-domain operational capabilities for the Space Force. This second doctrine (the first such USSF space doctrine was issued June 2020) focused on intelligence gathering and integration from space-based assets and the USSF’s role in it. Key areas discussed were Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR), as well as the process of how intelligence is collected. To me, what stood out was the definition of military space power as “the ability to accomplish strategic and military objectives through the control and exploitation of the space domain.” The focus of the Space Force is on joint campaigns and operations as identified in Joint Publications 3.0, Joint Campaigns and Operations. In August 2023, a doctrine update titled “Joint Publication 3-14: Joint Space Operations” specified how SPACECOM and other combatant commands should utilize space for both offensive and defensive operations. The updated Joint Publication 3-14 introduces the term “astrographic”, which describes SPACECOM’s Area of Responsibility starting at 100 kilometers above mean sea level, to exgeosynchronous orbit, beyond 36, 000 kilometers, to “include cislunar space, lunar orbit and Earth-Moon Lagrange points”. Space capacity Civilian launch US launch systems are dominated by SpaceX with its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, while other companies like Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Relativity Space, and United Launch Alliance are building these capacities as well. In April and November 2023, SpaceX conducted two Starship tests, both of which did not result in complete success. Starship is viewed as a game changer, similar to China’s Long March 9, on which capacity I have written here. If successful, Starship will have the capacity to launch 150 metric tonnes fully reusable, and 250 metric tonnes expendable, to LEO. Another US company, Rocket Lab, launched 10 rockets to space in 2023 and opened its first US launch site in Virginia. United Launch Alliance launched its Delta IV and Atlas V rockets in 2023 and successfully launched its Vulcan rocket in January 2024. Relativity Space launched the Terran 1 in March 2023, however. it did not succeed in reaching orbit. The company has now shelved the Terran 1 for Terran R, a bigger and more powerful rocket (capable of taking 27 tons to LEO) with an expendable upper stage, atop an expendable or reusable first stage. Military launch In January 2022, the US Air Force awarded a $102 million contract to SpaceX to develop a point-to-point space transportation system (rocket cargo program), to be led by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), to examine how commercial rockets like Starship could contribute to the DoD logistics, termed by the AFRL as “Rocket Cargo for Agile Global Logistics”. The idea behind a rocket cargo system is to utilize rockets to transfer tens of tons of cargo to respond to disaster relief and support military operations, halfway across the world, within a 60- to 90-minute transfer time. Other space companies participating in the rocket cargo program include Raytheon and Rocket Lab. The China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) has also released a concept video for point-to-point transportation which features both a Starship-like concept and an airbreathing hypersonic spaceplane. Thanks to SpaceX, the US is ahead regarding reusable launches and commercial satellite capabilities. In December 2023, the Space Force, in partnership with SpaceX, launched its space plane, the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle, its seventh such flight, but for the first time, launched on a Falcon Heavy rocket. The X-37B is a reusable uncrewed spaceplane, that the Space Force says will perform experiments on Space Domain Awareness (SDA) and the radiation effects to NASA materials. In September 2023, the Space Force made history when it launched a satellite, called Victus Nox, within 27 hours of receiving orders. Two US commercial companies involved in this project are Millennium Space Systems, which built the satellite, and Firefly Aerospace, which launched it. This is part of the Space Force’s tactical responsive space concept in case a satellite is lost during a conflict and requires fast replacement. In 2025, the Space Force aims to demonstrate an even faster response time with Victor Haze. Satellite communications, civil and military Thanks to SpaceX, the US is ahead regarding reusable launches and commercial satellite capabilities. With its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, SpaceX dominates the U.S. commercial launch market. SpaceX also has the largest constellation of satellites, Starlink, with more than 5,000 satellites. In December 2022, SpaceX revealed Starshield, a satellite constellation specifically meant for US government use. Starshield, according to SpaceX, will leverage Starlink capabilities for national security purposes which include “Earth observation, communication, and hosted payloads.” Starlink already offers unparalleled end-to-end user data encryption. Starshield uses additional high assurance cryptographic capability to host classified payloads and process data securely, meeting the most demanding government requirements. Civil lunar and cislunar After a 50-year gap from its last lunar landing in 1972, a US company, Intuitive Machines, launched its lunar lander, Odysseus, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on February 15, and touched down in the south polar region of the Moon on February 22. This landing was the first commercial lunar landing under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, which is aimed at encouraging the development of private lunar landers. Earlier attempts at a commercial lunar landing by Israel’s SpaceIL, Japan’s ispace, and US company Astrobotic (also under a CLPS contract) resulted in failures. While the signal from Intuitive Machines’ lander Nova-C Odysseus lander was weak, and the lander appears to have tipped on its side during the lunar landing, what is new is that it is a private company that made it to the lunar surface. During the Cold War, such US lunar capabilities were state capabilities developed by NASA; today it is being done by a startup, facilitated by a US public-private partnership to develop national space capabilities. With Intuitive Machines’ lunar landing, there is some level of lunar landing capacity for the US despite the mission’s difficulties. The US will need more such missions to get to a high level of competency and efficiency regarding its lunar missions. In other capabilities, NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) successfully launched in November 2022 as part of the Artemis 1 mission. Developing a fleet of diversified launch platforms bodes well for the US, keeping in mind the significant delays and overruns to the SLS. A report by the NASA Office of Inspector General, Office of Audits (November 2021), warned that: When aggregating all relevant costs across mission directorates, NASA is projected to spend $93 billion on the Artemis effort up to FY 2025. We also project the current production and operations cost of a single SLS/Orion system at $4.1 billion per launch for Artemis I through IV, although the Agency’s ongoing initiatives aimed at increasing affordability seek to reduce that cost. Multiple factors contribute to the high cost of ESD [Exploration Systems Development] programs, including the use of sole-source, cost-plus contracts; the inability to definitize key contract terms in a timely manner; and the fact that except for the Orion capsule, its subsystems, and the supporting launch facilities, all components are expendable and “single use” unlike emerging commercial space flight systems. Without capturing, accurately reporting, and reducing the cost of future SLS/Orion missions, the Agency will face significant challenges to sustaining its Artemis program in its current configuration. All this means that the US lunar program, including its CLPS program, has been plagued by delays, with further delays now announced for the Artemis program. The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued its report on NASA’s Artemis program in January 2024 in which it found that NASA lacked transparency regarding cost estimates and that Artemis deadlines would not be met. In an earlier report issued by GAO in 2021, NASA was found to have limited control over Artemis supply chain mechanisms and faced management and technical risks. Military cislunar While the Space Force did not issue any public statement on their efforts to develop cislunar capacities, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) released documents on the issue in 2022, as well as the National Air and Space Intel Center (NASIC) in 2023, all discussing the potential of cislunar competition and threats. This was a new development compared to earlier years where cislunar discussions were more or less ignored by the US intelligence community. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) issued a seven-month study in 2023 into a 10-year Lunar Architecture (LunA-10) capability that “aims to rapidly develop foundational technology concepts that move away from individual scientific efforts within isolated, self-sufficient systems, toward a series of shareable, scalable systems that interoperate — minimizing lunar footprint and creating monetizable services for future lunar users.” International partnerships In the article on US space policy for The Space Review in January 2023, I highlighted that US international partnerships do need to reflect the language and needs of allies and partner nations. Some changes have been reflected in that regard with the US moving to collaborate with India on its human spaceflight program, planetary defense, and space situational awareness, as well as getting about ten new nations to sign the Artemis Accords in 2023, bringing the total to 36 nations to date. India signing the Artemis Accords in June 2023 was a big win for both the US and India’s strategic space diplomacy. I am starting to think perhaps the US requires an overarching institutional entity for space—a Department of Space—that brings together its disparate space agencies, something stronger than the National Space Council. The US has also achieved signatories from Africa (Rwanda, Nigeria, Angola) but lost South Africa to China’s International Lunar Research Station. Regarding norms and guiding principles to deter space threats, there is no consensus, and the US leadership has failed to anticipate how this particular issue has played out at the UN. Russia vetoed the Open-Ended Working Group on Reducing Space Threats Through Norms, Rules and Principles of Responsible Behavior from submitting even a formal report to the United Nations General Assembly. The recent reports on Russia developing an ASAT capability, with the ability to detonate a nuclear device, in space have raised the stakes for the US to assert leadership in reigning in destructive behavior that can destroy all military and communication satellites. Getting the support of a major space nation like India, which abstained from the US ASAT moratorium, would go a long way to building global consensus on space norms. This is where the US must adapt to the changing realities of the 21st century where space is not just about prestige, a lens which most Western analysts utilize to explain away the space ambitions of China and India, but it is about both economic and military power projection. Evaluating the written word One can read into these documents on policy, strategy, and doctrine aimed at a strategic push for US space leadership, and yet come away with the impression that nothing is really clear in terms of US national strategy regarding space. What is the US aiming for here? Where are its clearly stated timelines for space accomplishments; what is its space vision? While the Biden Administration has made concerted efforts to issue several policy documents, the absence of a clear space policy structure (who is in charge) renders the US space program ineffective in its strategic messaging, both to a domestic American audience and globally. Russia’s national security push for space, including an alleged development of a space-based nuclear weapon capable of an electromagnetic pulse, and China’s 2049 ambitions for space, implies that leadership in the space domain is up for grabs. India also issued a 2047 Space Vision in 2023. This absence of strategic clarity renders the US position weak. I am starting to think perhaps the US requires an overarching institutional entity for space—a Department of Space—that brings together its disparate space agencies, something stronger than the National Space Council. Informed serious debate should be generated in this regard, of whether that is a good idea. Such a policy-relevant debate should not repeat the public relations catastrophe and the lack of seriousness that preceded the establishment of the Space Force, something the service continues to fight, as it establishes itself as a military service of repute, having to waste precious time in demonstrating its usefulness, time and again. Missed opportunities and delays Among the missed opportunities for the US was the absence of any policy plan for building space-based solar power (besides a January 2024 NASA feasibility study), clear long-term plans for space mining, or plans for scaling up nuclear power generation for a permanent lunar base. US space nuclear ambitions are limited, and policy itself appears to be limiting the scale and breadth of US nuclear power and propulsion capacities. For instance, according to Space Policy Directive 6, issued by the Trump Administration in December 2020, the US should “demonstrate a fission power system on the surface of the Moon that is scalable to a power range of 40 kWe to support sustained Lunar presence and exploration of Mars”. US competitors like China are moving ahead of the US when it comes to long-term space planning, a clear grand strategy, and the economic purpose behind its space program. Countries like Japan and India are starting to issue clear roadmaps for their space program. Compared to the plans of its competitors, the US space nuclear power plans seem undersized. China plans to utilize one megawatt of nuclear energy to power its lunar base between 2028 and 2036. China is already the leader in nuclear energy on Earth with 21 nuclear reactors under construction in 2023 capable of generating 21.61 gigawatt of electricity, according to International Atomic Energy Agency estimates. In an excellent 2019 Space Review piece, Bart Hendrickx offered us insights into Russian company KB Arsenal where, in 2014, Director General Andrei Romanov stated to the press that “Roscosmos and the Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation…envisages the development of a one-megawatt gas-cooled reactor (Project TEM) with gas-turbine energy conversion to provide power to an array of ion thrusters needed to deliver payloads to high orbits or other destinations in the solar system.” While TEM is a civilian nuclear space reactor project, KB Arsenal since 2014 has also been working on “military satellite equipped with a nuclear power source. Called Ekipazh, its mission may well be to perform electronic warfare from space,” for Russia’s Ministry of Defense. Conclusion The US space program has registered some positive changes regarding space resource utilization, cislunar space, space development, and national security in terms of issuing policy documents and strategic guidelines. The policies and strategies, however, have not translated fast enough into institutions and actual capabilities. Ongoing space competition and socialization, based on evidence, is that US competitors like China are moving ahead of the US when it comes to long-term space planning, a clear grand strategy, and the economic purpose behind its space program. Countries like Japan and India are starting to issue clear roadmaps for their space program. The lack of a clear US national strategy regarding space is evident, with several agencies involved in the regulatory and policy process, with no single entity responsible for space. As stated earlier, it is perhaps time we start a serious discussion on whether the 20th-century-based US space institutions are indeed adapting to 21st-century needs. While the hope within the US space community is that its commercial space sector would offer it an advantage, commercial companies build competencies, not policy and strategy. Without a national-level strategic vision for space development, that commercial advantage could be fettered away, leaving key strategic areas in space open to varying levels of authoritarian influence. Namrata Goswami, Ph.D. teaches space policy, and international relations at the Thunderbird School of Global Management, Arizona State University. Currently, she is working on a book on space power theory. Note: we are now moderating comments. There will be a delay in posting comments and no guarantee that all submitted comments will be posted.