May 21, 2023

SpaceX Launches Axiom 2 Crew to ISS From Florida, Lands Booster at Spaceport (Source: SPACErePORT)
SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule with a crew of four private astronauts from the Cape Canaveral Spaceport. Eight minutes later the rocket's first stage booster landed at the spaceport. The privately organized Axiom 2 mission will have four astronauts spend eight days on the ISS, supporting commercially funded research and performing other activities. (5/21)

Stoke Space Aims for Holy Grail of a Fully Reusable Launch Vehicle (Source: Parabolic Arc)
Stoke Space’s as-yet-unnamed medium-lift launch vehicle would have a reusable first stage powered by seven liquid natural gas/liquid oxygen engines. The stage would be capable of landing back at its launch site or a location downrange in a manner similar to the way SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy first stages are recovered for reuse.

Stoke’s major innovation comes with its reusable liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen-powered second stage. Instead of using a single engine as many upper stages do, the stage will feature 30 thrusters located on the perimeter of a metal heat shield. It will also feature clamshell-like payload fairings that would open to release satellites. However, unlike single-use rockets, the fairings would remain attached to the rocket instead of being jettisoned so that they could operate multiple times. (5/19)

Milky Way Galaxy May Be a Different Shape Than We Thought (Source: Space.com)
New measurements suggest that the Milky Way galaxy may have a different shape than we thought. The majority of known spiral galaxies seem to have two prominent "arms" that branch out and split into lesser arms. The traditional portrayal of the Milky Way is that of a galaxy with four major spiral arms extending out from a thick centralized bulge of stars. This makes our spiral galaxy stand out as an extremely rare outlier. A team of astronomers has published new research that suggests we have been wrong about the shape of the Milky Way for decades, with our galaxy instead having two main arms just like its contemporary spiral galaxies. (5/17)

NASA Selects Winners (Two From Florida), Announces Final Phase of Space Food Challenge (Source: NASA)
NASA has announced eight winning teams and awarded $750,000 in prizes in the second phase of the agency's Deep Space Food Challenge. The winning teams will move on to compete in the third and final phase of the challenge. As NASA prepares to send astronauts farther into the solar system than ever before, the agency needs food systems that can fortify future crews in deep space for years at a time. The Deep Space Food Challenge calls on solvers from around the world to create technologies to help feed astronauts on future long-term space missions. Click here. (5/19)

Agencies Studying Safety Issues of LOX/Methane Launch Vehicles (Source: Space News)
Three U.S. government agencies are undertaking studies to examine the safety issues associated with a new generation of launch vehicles that use liquid oxygen and methane propellants. At a May 15 meeting of the FAA’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Group (COMSTAC), FAA officials described efforts that are underway to understand the explosive effects of that propellant combination in the event of a launch accident.

That propellant combination has been used on two launches of American vehicles to date: Relativity Space’s Terran 1 on March 22 and SpaceX’s Starship April 20. It will also be used on engines that will power Relativity’s larger Terran R as well as Blue Origin’s New Glenn, Rocket Lab’s Neutron and United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur. Companies are attracted to liquid oxygen (LOX) and methane since it offers a higher specific impulse and burns cleaner than LOX and kerosene. But, there’s little information about the explosive potential of that propellant combination.

“We just don’t know the yield of the explosive enough from the FAA perspective, so that’s why we’re conducting experiments,” he said at the COMSTAC meeting. The concern is that both LOX and methane are miscible, meaning that they readily mix together, increasing its explosive potential. Understanding that explosive potential, he said, will support FAA work on public safety, such as establishing hazard areas and refining calculations of the maximum probable loss that launch providers need to insure against. (5/20)

SpaceX Launches OneWeb Gen 2 Technology Demonstrator (Source: Space News)
SpaceX launched a technology demonstration satellite for OneWeb’s second-generation broadband constellation May 20, along with spares for the British firm’s current low Earth orbit (LEO) network and another that U.S.-based Iridium Communications operates. A Falcon 9 rocket carrying a total 21 spacecraft lifted off 9:16 a.m. Eastern amid heavy fog at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on a polar trajectory to the south. All five Iridium spares were deployed an hour later, followed by 16 OneWeb satellites that separated in pairs. The rocket’s first-stage booster successfully landed on a droneship in the Atlantic Ocean for reuse following its eleventh flight. (5/20)

Lunar Orbital Congestion Is Gonna Be A Thing (Source: Forbes)
Going to the Moon to stay demands more hardware options than Apollo’s singular solution. Artemis offers a more flexible, multi-system, multivendor approach for getting humans to the lunar surface and supporting them there during extended stays. Led by the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate (ESMD), Artemis is part of a broader NASA approach to the Moon. All this American activity is taking place in the context of global “Moon Fever.” Walking the floor of the International Astronautical Conference in Paris last fall, I couldn’t help but feel that the Moon will soon be a very busy and very international destination.

On Earth, we take space related services for granted, including Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) services, telecommunications, remote sensing, and other satellite-delivered services. Lunar surface operations will require similar services. We will see multiple lunar PNT, remote sensing, and communications constellations. My guess is that there a couple dozen lunar satellites today and that will grow to 1,000 by 2030. You might dismiss that count as a non-issue, given numbers in Earth orbit. However, the lunar orbital environment is uniquely challenging. Because the Moon has no atmospheric drag and an object in a stable orbit stays there a long time, it is hard to be sure of the number or location of derelict lunar satellites.

The lunar equivalent of LEO is LLO (Low Lunar Orbit). LLO sats can get down to just 20 or 30 kilometers above the surface, thanks to that lack of atmosphere. Since the Moon is a tighter sphere than the Earth, a satellite can cover a significant portion of the surface at a much lower altitude. It’s unlikely that many LLO satellites would orbit more than 1,000km above the surface. We might argue that LLO offers about 63% of relative volume to surface area compared to LEO. It turns out that there are just four really stable low lunar orbits, at 27º, 50º, 76º, and 86º inclinations from the lunar equator. That’s not a bad distribution of inclinations, allowing for a wide distribution over the surface, but it should be obvious that these desirable orbits will soon be jam packed with satellites. The LLO orbital congestion problem promises to be a lot worse than LEO! (5/20)

China's Mysterious Spaceplane Released an Unidentified 'Object' in Orbit, US Intelligence Reveals  (Source: Live Science)
After nine months in orbit, China's mysterious space plane has landed for the second time, making the nation one of the few entities to successfully launch and recover a reusable spacecraft. "The complete success of this experiment marks a significant breakthrough in our country's research on reusable spacecraft technology," Xinhua, a Chinese state media agency, reported earlier this month. However, the Chinese government has released very little additional information about the craft; the details of its design, capabilities and performance remain hazy. (5/20)