NASA will allow SpaceX to reuse Crew Dragon spacecraft and the Falcon 9 first stages for launching them as soon as next year. //
SpaceNews.com
NASA to allow reuse of Crew Dragon spacecraft and boosters
by Jeff Foust — June 16, 2020
Demo-2 booster on droneship
The Falcon 9 first stage that launched the Demo-2 mission returning to Port Canaveral, Florida, after a droneship landing. While the booster for the Demo-2 mission was new, NASA will allow SpaceX to use previously flown boosters and Crew Dragon spacecraft on ISS missions starting next year. Credit: SpaceX
WASHINGTON — NASA will allow SpaceX to reuse Crew Dragon spacecraft and the Falcon 9 first stages for launching them as soon as next year.
A modification to the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract NASA has with SpaceX, published last month, will allow SpaceX to reuse both the Falcon 9 first stage and Crew Dragon spacecraft starting with the second operational mission of the spacecraft, known as Post-Certification Mission (PCM) 2 or Crew-2. That change was described as part of a “bilateral modification” that also formally extended the length of the Demo-2 mission from two weeks to as long as 119 days.
The move is a change for SpaceX, as the company originally planned to use a new Crew Dragon spacecraft on each of its commercial crew missions for NASA. That stood in contrast to Boeing, which will refurbish its CST-100 Starliner crew modules between flights.
Company officials earlier this year, though, hinted that they were now considering reusing Crew Dragon vehicles on NASA flights. “We intend for Crew Dragon to also be fully reusable,” said Benji Reed, director of crew mission management at SpaceX, during a briefing about a month before the launch of the Demo-2 mission. The Crew Dragon flying the Demo-2 mission, he said, would be reused, but didn’t say at the time if the spacecraft would be reused on a NASA or non-NASA mission.
NASA spokesperson Stephanie Schierholz said in response to SpaceNews questions about the contract modification that SpaceX approached NASA about allowing the reuse of spacecraft and boosters on later missions.
“In this case, SpaceX has proposed to reuse future Falcon 9 and/or Crew Dragon systems or components for NASA missions to the International Space Station because they believe it will be beneficial from a safety and/or cost standpoint,” she said. “NASA performed an in-depth review and determined that the terms of the overall contract modification were in the best interests of the government.”
The Demo-2 mission used both a new Crew Dragon spacecraft and new Falcon 9 rocket. The same will be true for the first operational mission, Crew-1 or PCM-1, scheduled for no earlier than Aug. 30. PCM-2 would launch some time in 2021, Schierholz said.
The reuse of a Falcon 9 booster or Crew Dragon spacecraft on any NASA mission will require a “delta-certification” review by NASA, she said, and NASA won’t allow any vehicles that are “flight leaders” in terms of service life be used for those missions. SpaceX has tended to test the limits of Falcon 9 booster reuse on its own Starlink launches, including a June 3 launch that marked the fifth launch and landing of the same booster.
SpaceX and NASA took a gradual approach to the reuse of the original cargo version of the Dragon spacecraft for missions under the company’s Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract with NASA. SpaceX won approval to start reusing Dragon spacecraft with the CRS-11 mission in 2017. Eight of the subsequent nine flights used previously flown capsules, with three capsules ultimately making three flights each.
SpaceX started reusing Falcon 9 boosters on CRS missions with CRS-13 in December 2017, which was the fourth Falcon 9 launch overall to use a reflown booster. Four of the seven CRS missions that followed also used boosters making their second flight.
On the eve of SpaceX launching astronauts, a preview of a forthcoming book from Lori Garver, former NASA deputy administrator, and Michael Sheetz, CNBC space reporter. //
The following is a preview of a forthcoming book from Lori Garver, former NASA deputy administrator, and Michael Sheetz, CNBC space reporter. "Bureaucrats and Billionaires: The Race to Save NASA" will tell the story of how a handful of revolutionaries helped pave the way for a new era at NASA. Lori's first-hand accounts include the decades leading up to the final negotiations that closed the deal for the commercial crew program as well as her collaboration with key players such as President Obama, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
When astronauts go back to the Moon in 2024, they'll be using European hardware to get there.
“I've done crazier things than dry out a radio antenna.” //
Demo-2, the first orbital human spaceflight to launch from the United States since NASA's space shuttle fleet retired in 2011, is a joint SpaceX-NASA effort. The company holds a $2.6 billion contract with NASA's Commercial Crew Program to fly six operational crewed missions to the ISS, and Demo-2 is designed to fully validate Crew Dragon and the Falcon 9 for those flights. //
Approximately two-thirds of the global launch market is effectively closed to competition because these are national payloads. For example, Russia and other space-faring countries will typically launch their military and science satellites on domestic rockets. Only about one-third of the overall launch market—consisting of satellite constellations, communications and imaging satellites for nations without launch programs, and other payloads—is truly open to competition.
Decades ago, US launch companies ceded this commercial market as they began to focus on winning more lucrative contracts to launch payloads for the US military. By 2006, when Boeing and Lockheed Martin consolidated their rocket businesses into a single company, United Launch Alliance, America essentially captured zero percent of the competitive launch market. Customers in the United States and abroad turned to more economical launchers in Europe, Russia, and elsewhere to reach orbit. Meanwhile, with a monopoly on launching missions for NASA and the US Department of Defense, United Launch Alliance’s prices steadily rose.
The success of the Falcon 9 rocket reversed this trend dramatically. Seeking lower cost delivery of supplies to the International Space Station, NASA invested $396 million in SpaceX from 2006 to 2010 to develop its Cargo Dragon spacecraft, the Falcon 9 rocket, and a launch pad at the Cape. This investment, which precipitated the June 4, 2010 launch from Florida, delivered not just value for NASA, but for the country. //
“Because of the investments that NASA has made into SpaceX we now have, the United States of America now has about 70 percent of the commercial launch market,” said the space agency’s administrator, Jim Bridenstine. “That is a big change from 2012 when we had exactly zero percent.” //
Most visibly, the company demonstrated reuse of the first stage booster. On its very next mission following the CRS-7 failure, in fact, SpaceX landed a Falcon 9 first stage for the first time. The next April, the company nailed its first drone ship landing. Then, in March 2017, the company successfully re-flew a Falcon 9 first stage for the first time. In the three years since, SpaceX has landed more than 50 rockets and flown the same booster five or more times.
Carissa Christensen, founder of Bryce Space and Technology, an analytics firm, said the reuse of vertically launched and landed rockets had been discussed in the aerospace community for decades. "This was always something that would make a difference, and it was desirable, but it never happened," she said. "Then SpaceX made it happen."
Moreover, she said, the company did this on its own initiative. Typically in spaceflight, a government agency will offer a contract for some type of project and pick a contractor to do the work. Although SpaceX received a substantial amount of NASA funding for cargo and crew delivery to the space station, it got no money for reuse. Instead, Christensen said, the company invested its own funds to clear a "very, very high" technical hurdle that others had aspired to. In return for chancing its own funds on reuse, SpaceX now has the world's only reusable, orbital rocket, and it has just furthered its ability to dominate the commercial satellite market. //
"It's clear that the space industry is on a path toward next-generation launch vehicles," she said. "But SpaceX is 10 years ahead of those next-generation launch vehicles. SpaceX had its first launch of its next-generation launch vehicle 10 years ago." The world of launch, she marveled, has tilted almost beyond recognition from a decade ago. Then, SpaceX was the upstart. Now the Falcon 9 is considered the old, reliable launch vehicle. //
FLORIDA TODAY photographer's photo of crowd leaving Titusville bridge after SpaceX launch scrub got everyone's attention, albeit for different reasons.
most prominently it's reflected in the character of Cooper himself. He is exactly representing this pioneering attitude as one of the few people who are not ready to give up humanity's progress and accustom himself to the situation rather than actively trying to advance beyond it, as also reflected in his dialogue to Donald after the meeting with the teachers:
It's like we've forgotten who we are, Donald. Explorers, pioneers, not caretakers...Well, we used to look up in the sky and wonder at our place in the stars. Now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt.
This is also reinforced by the screenwriters Christopher and Jonathan Nolan themselves in an interview with Jordan Goldberg, as printed in Interstellar: The Complete Screenplay with Selected Storyboards where they even go as far as setting it in relation to our current attitude towards space exploration, putting the movie as a parable to remotivate humanity's drive towards the stars (emphasis mine):
JN ...I wanted to do something that reflected what I thought was the current state of human ambition. Which it is to say we congratulate ourselves every day on living in this spectacular moment of technological advancement and progress [...] but we're not going into space. Measured purely by altitude, the human race peaked fifty years ago. //
JN ...the safe bet was in a million years that alien anthropologists would come to Earth and they would find a stick with a piece of polyester on the moon, and they would say, 'Wow, they almost made it. They got that far.' So, you wash away all the day-to-day stuff that we get caught up in. [...] That drive to get out, to explore the universe, will be the residue that's left behind. Armstrong will be the person that people talk about.
Which brings us back to the "faked" moonlandings. They are a perfect way to highlight this contrast between Cooper and the society he lives in, seeing how the Apollo missions were the pinnacle of human-led space exploration and to this day remain a signpost achievement in this regard. For humanity to ignore and deny that achievement, they ignore and inhibit their own progress.
Going forward, U.S. space exploration will be mostly done by the private sector, that is, if we wish to retain our lead @teamcavuto //
Cavuto had to throw cold water on the excitement. With no less than 5 of his guests, he insisted on asking, “What do you think about private companies taking the lead in space flight?” His tone and tenor implied that this was a bad thing—something wrong. //
Well, Mr. Cavuto, private enterprise has been at the forefront of aviation since its beginnings here in these United States. When the Wright Brothers took their famous flight, they were not employees of the Federal Government. Robert Goddard, long looked at as one of the pioneers of American rocketry, was a private citizen, funded mostly by private organizations. Throughout the rise of first aviation and then rocketry, private citizens, either alone or in private companies, were leading the charge on new discoveries and technological innovation.
One major exception to this, was when NACA/NASA was given the mission to beat the Soviets into space and thence to the Moon. Indeed, many of the researchers and designers were federal employees. But that was a crash program and itself an aberration. //
One tool that enabled this private sector innovation was the use of prize money or private sponsorships. In aviation, prize money, either from private donations or even sometimes from government, was quite commonly used to incentivize the private sector to solve a technological problem. Here is a clip from the December 1947 issue of Flying Magazine. Note the public-private partnership and use of prize money. //
Our education system is sadly failing our citizens. The fact that one of the lead anchors on an allegedly center-right news organization looks at a privately-led exploration effort in space and considers that not only some sort of aberration, but implies that there is something wrong with it, bothers me. It’s an insult to explorers and innovators like Drake, Cook, Shackleton, Goddard, Frank, and Orville Wright, to name but a few. Mr. Cavuto, it’s NASA that is the aberration, not Space-X.
When the National Aeronautics and Space Administration came into existence in 1958, the stereotypical computer was the "UNIVAC," a collection of spinning tape drives, noisy printers, and featureless boxes, filling a house-sized room. Expensive to purchase and operate, the giant computer needed a small army of technicians in constant attendance to keep it running. Within a decade and a half, NASA had one of the world's largest collections of such monster computers, scattered in each of its centers. Moreover, to the amazement of anyone who knew the computer field in 1958, NASA also flew computers in orbit, to the moon, and to Mars, the latter machines running unattended for months on end.
Crew Dragon has arrived at launchpad 39A ahead of next week's launch.
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule will be only the fifth American craft to be rated for human spaceflight in history. Clearing NASA’s certification process takes years.
Earlier this month, SpaceX engineers completed the 27th and final test of the parachute system that will soon be responsible for carrying astronauts back to Earth. When the four parachute canopies successfully unfurled over the Mojave Desert, it indicated that the company was finally ready to start sending humans to space after nearly a decade of relentless testing and dramatic setbacks. Now SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule is on the cusp of becoming only the fifth American spacecraft to ever be certified by NASA for human spaceflight. But before that happens, the company has to pass a final high-stakes test: sending a pair of astronauts into orbit and bringing them safely back home.
On May 27, SpaceX is expected to launch NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The astronauts will be doing critical scientific work on the space station, but the upcoming Demo-2 mission is first and foremost about certifying Crew Dragon for human spaceflight. “Most of our human certification is being completed with this mission,” SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said during a press conference earlier this month. “We’re doing this to wring out the system. This is a test mission.” She estimated that the Demo-2 mission would account for about 95 percent of the human-rating certification process for the Crew Dragon capsule. //
The last time NASA certified a new spacecraft for humans was in 1981, during the maiden flight of the space shuttle. The shuttle program came to an end in 2011, which was the last time American astronauts launched to space from US soil. For the past decade, all astronauts bound for the space station have hitched a ride on Russian rockets. NASA awarded SpaceX and Boeing contracts to certify their own crewed vehicles only a year after the last shuttle flight, but building a human-rated spacecraft has proven to be a long journey. //
all human-rated spacecraft must be capable of being manually and remotely controlled, even if the spacecraft is usually almost entirely automated. //
Both companies successfully completed pad abort tests, which involve firing the escape thrusters on a crew capsule while it’s still on the launch pad. But only SpaceX conducted an in-flight abort test and jettisoned its capsule from a rocket during flight. Boeing opted to do simulations of an in-flight abort test based on its data.
This article considers the utilisation of modern image processing and enhancement to determine the impact of the catastrophic failure of Cryogenic Oxygen Tank 2, and it's subsequent impact on Bay 4 and critical systems on Apollo 13. The analysis also aims to aid visualisation and identify key components of the damaged Service Module.
Details of the original photographic analysis which formed a significant part of the 1970 investigation can be found in Apollo 13 document collection with particular reference to the following documents: //
Only around half a second separated the first vibrations detected in the accelerometers (caused by changing pressures in oxygen tank 2) and rapid pressure increase in Bay 4, leading to panel blow out. A calculated 60,000-pound force was effected on the CSM and 1.17g was recorded in the X-axis as the panel blew out and contacted the High Gain Antenna, although the actual total attitude change was small.
The shock loads closed several reaction control propellant isolation valves and the reactant valves in the fuel cell oxygen system leading to the loss of electrical power from fuel cells 1 and 3. The oxygen tank 2 feedline or pressure transducer wiring / plumbing was also severed leading to a zero reading on tank 2.
Damage to the adjacent oxygen tank 1 lead to a leak, and this venting oxygen caused attitude changes necessitating stabilisation from the attitude control system. However, some thrusters were assigned to main bus B which received electrical power from the now dead fuel cell 3 and as such were not functioning.
For the next 1.5 hours there were confusing firings of the attitude control thrusters. Lovell struggled to regain correct attitude manually, only re-assigning the thrusters to main bus A allowed Lovell to eventually regain control.
Image enhancement techniques have been used to reveal life aboard Nasa's stricken Apollo 13 spacecraft in unprecedented detail.
Fifty years ago, the craft suffered an explosion that jeopardised the lives of the three astronauts aboard.
Unsurprisingly, given they were locked in a fight for survival, relatively few onboard images were taken.
But imaging specialist Andy Saunders created sharp stills from low-quality 16mm film shot by the crew.
One of the techniques used by Mr Saunders is known as "stacking", in which many frames are assembled on top of each other to improve the image's detail.
NASA released a series of panoramic images of the Apollo landing sites for the 50th anniversary of the moon mission.
With data from NASA's LRO mission, researchers have recreated what the Apollo 13 astronauts saw on their trip around the moon.
The water ice and other lunar resources that will help the United States establish a long-term human presence on the moon are there for the taking, the White House believes.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order today (April 6) establishing U.S. policy on the exploitation of off-Earth resources. That policy stresses that the current regulatory regime — notably, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty — allows the use of such resources.
This view has long held sway in U.S. government circles. For example, the United States, like the other major spacefaring nations, has not signed the 1979 Moon Treaty, which stipulates that non-scientific use of space resources be governed by an international regulatory framework. And in 2015, Congress passed a law explicitly allowing American companies and citizens to use moon and asteroid resources.
“This is another critical piece of our plan to return to the Moon sustainably." //
Last summer, NASA put out a call for companies who would be willing to deliver cargo to a proposed station in orbit around the Moon, called the Lunar Gateway. On Friday, NASA announced that the first award under this "Gateway Logistics" contract would go to SpaceX.
The company has proposed using its Falcon Heavy rocket to deliver a modified version of its Dragon spacecraft, called Dragon XL, to the Lunar Gateway. After delivering cargo, experiments and other supplies, the spacecraft would be required to remain docked at the Gateway for a year before "autonomous" disposal.
On 11 April 1970, the Lovell family watched their husband and father, Jim Lovell, blast off on Nasa's third mission to land on the Moon.
But this was to be an ill-fated mission, and in the six days that followed, the Lovells found themselves facing intense agony.
As the 50th anniversary of the mission approaches, we hear Jim's wife, now 89, and his daughter and son, now in their 60s, relive their incredible story.
Buzz Aldrin
@TheRealBuzz
·
Aug 2, 2015
Yes the #Apollo11 crew also signed customs forms. We brought back moon rocks & moon dust samples. Moon disease TBD.
Audit finds that error could actually mean less data flows to boffins because space agency may not be able to afford downloads