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Tag: spacecraft

  • In an engineering feat, mechanical SpaceX arms catch Starship rocket booster back at the launch pad

    In an engineering feat, mechanical SpaceX arms catch Starship rocket booster back at the launch pad

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    SpaceX pulled off the boldest test flight yet of its enormous Starship rocket on Sunday, catching the returning booster back at the launch pad with mechanical arms.

    A jubilant Elon Musk called it “science fiction without the fiction part.”

    Towering almost 400 feet (121 meters), the empty Starship blasted off at sunrise from the southern tip of Texas near the Mexican border. It arced over the Gulf of Mexico like the four Starships before it that ended up being destroyed, either soon after liftoff or while ditching into the sea. The previous one in June had been the most successful until Sunday’s demo, completing its flight without exploding.

    This time, Musk, SpaceX’s CEO and founder, upped the challenge for the rocket that he plans to use to send people back to the moon and on to Mars.

    At the flight director’s command, the first-stage booster flew back to the launch pad where it had blasted off seven minutes earlier. The launch tower’s monstrous metal arms, dubbed chopsticks, caught the descending 232-foot (71-meter) stainless steel booster and gripped it tightly, dangling it well above the ground.

    “The tower has caught the rocket!!” Musk announced via X. “Big step towards making life multiplanetary was made today.”

    Company employees screamed in joy, jumping and pumping their fists into the air. NASA joined in the celebration, with Administrator Bill Nelson sending congratulations.

    Continued testing of Starship will prepare the nation for landing astronauts at the moon’s south pole, Nelson noted. NASA’s new Artemis program is the follow-up to Apollo, which put 12 men on the moon more than a half-century ago.

    “Folks, this is a day for the engineering history books,” SpaceX engineering manager Kate Tice said from SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California.

    “Even in this day and age, what we just saw is magic,” added company spokesman Dan Huot from near the launch and landing site. “I am shaking right now.”

    It was up to the flight director to decide, in real time with a manual control, whether to attempt the landing. SpaceX said both the booster and launch tower had to be in good, stable condition. Otherwise, it was going to end up in the gulf like the previous ones. Everything was judged to be ready for the catch.

    The retro-looking spacecraft launched by the booster continued around the world, soaring more than 130 miles (212 kilometers) high. An hour after liftoff, it made a controlled landing in the Indian Ocean, adding to the day’s achievement. Cameras on a nearby buoy showed flames shooting up from the water as the spacecraft impacted precisely at the targeted spot and sank, as planned.

    “What a day,” Huot said. “Let’s get ready for the next one.”

    The June flight came up short at the end after pieces came off. SpaceX upgraded the software and reworked the heat shield, improving the thermal tiles.

    SpaceX has been recovering the first-stage boosters of its smaller Falcon 9 rockets for nine years, after delivering satellites and crews to orbit from Florida or California. But they land on floating ocean platforms or on concrete slabs several miles from their launch pads — not on them.

    Recycling Falcon boosters has sped up the launch rate and saved SpaceX millions. Musk intends to do the same for Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built with 33 methane-fuel engines on the booster alone.

    Musk said the captured Starship booster looked to be in good shape, with just a little warping of some of the outer engines from all the heat and aerodynamic forces. That can be fixed easily, he noted.

    NASA has ordered two Starships to land astronauts on the moon later this decade. SpaceX intends to use Starship to send people and supplies to the moon and, eventually Mars.

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    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft will scour Jupiter moon for the ingredients for life

    NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft will scour Jupiter moon for the ingredients for life

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    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A NASA spacecraft is ready to set sail for Jupiter and its moon Europa, one of the best bets for finding life beyond Earth.

    Europa Clipper will peer beneath the moon’s icy crust where an ocean is thought to be sloshing fairly close to the surface. It won’t search for life, but rather determine whether conditions there could support it. Another mission would be needed to flush out any microorganisms lurking there.

    “It’s a chance for us to explore not a world that might have been habitable billions of years ago, but a world that might be habitable today — right now,” said program scientist Curt Niebur.

    Its massive solar panels make Clipper the biggest craft built by NASA to investigate another planet. It will take 5 1/2 years to reach Jupiter and will sneak within 16 miles (25 kilometers) of Europa’s surface — considerably closer than any other spacecraft.

    Liftoff is targeted for this month aboard SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Mission cost: $5.2 billion.

    One of Jupiter’s 95 known moons, Europa is almost the size of our own moon. It’s encased in an ice sheet estimated to be 10 miles to 15 miles or more (15 kilometers to 24 kilometers) thick. Scientists believe this frozen crust hides an ocean that could be 80 miles (120 kilometers) or more deep. The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted what appear to be geysers erupting from the surface. Discovered by Galileo in 1610, Europa is one of the four so-called Galilean moons of Jupiter, along with Ganymede, Io and Callisto.

    What type of life might Europa harbor? Besides water, organic compounds are needed for life as we know it, plus an energy source. In Europa’s case that could be thermal vents on the ocean floor. Deputy project scientist Bonnie Buratti imagines any life would be primitive like the bacterial life that originated in Earth’s deep ocean vents. “We will not know from this mission because we can’t see that deep,” she said. Unlike missions to Mars where habitability is one of many questions, Clipper’s sole job is to establish whether the moon could support life in its ocean or possibly in any pockets of water in the ice.

    When its solar wings and antennas are unfurled, Clipper is about the size of a basketball court — more than 100 feet (30 meters) end to end — and weighs nearly 13,000 pounds (6,000 kilograms). The supersized solar panels are needed because of Jupiter’s distance from the sun. The main body — about the size of a camper — is packed with nine science instruments, including radar that will penetrate the ice, cameras that will map virtually the entire moon and tools to tease out the contents of Europa’s surface and tenuous atmosphere. The name hearkens to the swift sailing ships of centuries past.

    The roundabout trip to Jupiter will span 1.8 billion miles (3 billion kilometers). For extra oomph, the spacecraft will swing past Mars early next year and then Earth in late 2026. It arrives at Jupiter in 2030 and begins science work the next year. While orbiting Jupiter, it will cross paths with Europa 49 times. The mission ends in 2034 with a planned crash into Ganymede — Jupiter’s biggest moon and the solar system’s too.

    There’s more radiation around Jupiter than anywhere else in our solar system, besides the sun. Europa passes through Jupiter’s bands of radiation as it orbits the gas giant, making it especially menacing for spacecraft. That’s why Clipper’s electronics are inside a vault with dense aluminum and zinc walls. All this radiation would nix any life on Europa’s surface. But it could break down water molecules and, perhaps, release oxygen all the way down into the ocean that could possibly fuel sea life.

    Earlier this year, NASA was in a panic that the spacecraft’s many transistors might not withstand the intense radiation. But after months of analysis, engineers concluded the mission could proceed as planned.

    NASA’s twin Pioneer spacecraft and then two Voyagers swept past Jupiter in the 1970s. The Voyagers provided the first detailed photos of Europa but from quite a distance. NASA’s Galileo spacecraft had repeated flybys of the moon during the 1990s, passing as close as 124 miles (200 kilometers). Still in action around Jupiter, NASA’s Juno spacecraft has added to Europa’s photo album. Arriving at Jupiter a year after Clipper will be the European Space Agency’s Juice spacecraft, launched last year.

    Like Europa, Jupiter’s jumbo moon Ganymede is thought to host an underground ocean. But its frozen shell is much thicker — possibly 100 miles (160 kilometers) thick — making it tougher to probe the environment below. Callisto’s ice sheet may be even thicker, possibly hiding an ocean. Saturn’s moon Enceladus has geysers shooting up, but it’s much farther than Jupiter. Ditto for Saturn’s moon Titan, also suspected of having a subterranean sea. While no ocean worlds have been confirmed beyond our solar system, scientists believe they’re out there — and may even be relatively common.

    Like many robotic explorers before it, Clipper bears messages from Earth. Attached to the electronics vault is a triangular metal plate. On one side is a design labeled “water words” with representations of the word for water in 104 languages. On the opposite side: a poem about the moon by U.S. poet laureate Ada Limon and a silicon chip containing the names of 2.6 million people who signed up to vicariously ride along.

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    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • The World’s First Commercial Space Station Looks Like a Luxury Hotel Inside

    The World’s First Commercial Space Station Looks Like a Luxury Hotel Inside

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    Aluminum for spacecraft interiors is passé; what space-farers apparently want is wood. That’s the bet from Vast, the makers of Haven-1, the world’s first commercial space station set to be placed in low-Earth orbit by the SpaceX Falcon rocket next year. First paying customers will be getting on board in 2026, and judging by the final designs just released of the station’s cozy interior, they’ll feel right at home.

    Helping to add softness to an interior previously more focused on function than style, Vast has used fine-grained maple wood—a contemporary favorite of home interior designers, chosen for its ability to add warmth and elegance to any space, and now space space.

    Naturally, the maple wood slats are there for aesthetic appeal more than anything else, but Haven-1 has also developed other creature comforts, including a puffy space duvet that should help to encourage a good night’s rest—not something easily achieved in space.

    “This is not just any old duvet,” says Hillary Coe, Vast’s chief design and marketing officer. “It’s a duvet that inflates, creating this equal pressure up against you which allows for a beautiful, comfortable night’s rest.”

    According to Vast, the patent-pending sleep system is roughly the size of a queen bed, and should accommodate side and back-sleepers alike.

    “Buzz-cut astronaut-dudes giggle when they come down to our office and see the sleep system—they’d loved to have had one [on their work-a-day missions],” says Coe, who spent five years as head of design at SpaceX before jumping spaceship to Vast. She’s also held design positions at Starlink, Google, and Apple.

    Vast’s patent-pending signature sleep system is roughly the size of a queen bed.

    Courtesy of Vast

    Eyes on the Stars

    Vast is a Southern California startup founded by crypto billionaire Jed McCaleb, a programmer who, in 2010, transformed his Mt. Gox card trading site into the first major Bitcoin exchange. He is worth $2.9 billion according to Forbes’ Billionaires List. McCaleb founded Vast in 2021 to develop artificial gravity space stations.

    Early hires included Kyle Dedmon, former SpaceX construction vice president; systems engineer Tom Hayford who has worked for Relativity Space and SpaceX; Molly McCormick, a former SpaceX human factors engineer; and Colin Smith, a former SpaceX propulsion engineer.

    “Earth has finite resources, but out in the solar system, there is an enormous untapped wealth, both in terms of energy and matter, that could support many ‘Earths,’” McCaleb told SpaceNews in 2022.

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    Carlton Reid

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  • A spacecraft is on its way to a harmless asteroid slammed by NASA in a previous save-the-Earth test

    A spacecraft is on its way to a harmless asteroid slammed by NASA in a previous save-the-Earth test

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    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A spacecraft blasted off Monday to investigate the scene of a cosmic crash.

    The European Space Agency’s Hera spacecraft rocketed away on a two-year journey to the small, harmless asteroid rammed by NASA two years ago in a dress rehearsal for the day a killer space rock threatens Earth. Launched by SpaceX from Cape Canaveral, it’s the second part of a planetary defense test that could one day help save the planet.

    The 2022 crash by NASA’s Dart spacecraft shortened Dimorphos’ orbit around its bigger companion, demonstrating that if a dangerous rock was headed our way, there’s a chance it could be knocked off course with enough advance notice.

    Scientists are eager to examine the impact’s aftermath up close to know exactly how effective Dart was and what changes might be needed to safeguard Earth in the future.

    “The more detail we can glean the better as it may be important for planning a future deflection mission should one be needed,” University of Maryland astronomer Derek Richardson said before launch.

    Researchers want to know whether Dart — short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test — left a crater or perhaps reshaped the 500-foot (150-meter) asteroid more dramatically. It looked something like a flying saucer before Dart’s blow and may now resemble a kidney bean, said Richardson, who took part in the Dart mission and is helping with Hera.

    Dart’s wallop sent rubble and even boulders flying off Dimorphos, providing an extra kick to the impact’s momentum. The debris trail extended thousands of miles (more than 10,000 kilometers) into space for months.

    Some boulders and other debris could still be hanging around the asteroid, posing a potential threat to Hera, said flight director Ignacio Tanco.

    “We don’t really know very well the environment in which we are going to operate,” said Tanco. “But that’s the whole point of the mission is to go there and find out.”

    European officials describe the $400 million (363 million euro) mission as a “crash scene investigation.”

    Hera “is going back to the crime site and getting all the scientific and technical information,” said project manager Ian Carnelli.

    Carrying a dozen science instruments, the small car-sized Hera will need to swing past Mars in 2025 for a gravity boost, before arriving at Dimorphos by the end of 2026. It’s a moonlet of Didymos, Greek for twin, a fast-spinning asteroid that’s five times bigger. At that time, the asteroids will be 120 million miles (195 million kilometers) from Earth.

    Controlled by a flight team in Darmstadt, Germany, Hera will attempt to go into orbit around the rocky pair, with the flyby distances gradually dropping from 18 miles (30 kilometers) all the way down to a half-mile (1 kilometer). The spacecraft will survey the moonlet for at least six months to ascertain its mass, shape and composition, as well as its orbit around Didymos.

    Before the impact, Dimorphos circled its larger companion from three-quarters of a mile (1,189 meters) out. Scientists believe the orbit is now tighter and oval-shaped, and that the moonlet may even be tumbling.

    Two shoebox-sized Cubesats will pop off Hera for even closer drone-like inspections, with one of them using radar to peer beneath the moonlet’s boulder-strewn surface. Scientists suspect Dimorphos was formed from material shed from Didymos. The radar observations should help confirm whether Didymos is indeed the little moon’s parent.

    The Cubesats will attempt to land on the moonlet once their survey is complete. If the moonlet is tumbling, that will complicate the endeavor. Hera may also end its mission with a precarious touchdown, but on the larger Didymos.

    Neither asteroid poses any threat to Earth — before or after Dart showed up. That’s why NASA picked the pair for humanity’s first asteroid-deflecting demo.

    Leftovers from the solar system’s formation 4.6 billion years ago, asteroids primarily orbit the sun between Mars and Jupiter in what’s known as the main asteroid belt, where millions of them reside. They become near-Earth objects when they’re knocked out of the belt and into our neck of the woods.

    NASA’s near-Earth object count currently tops 36,000, almost all asteroids but also some comets. More than 2,400 of them are considered potentially hazardous to Earth.

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    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • NASA switches off instrument on Voyager 2 spacecraft to save power

    NASA switches off instrument on Voyager 2 spacecraft to save power

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    NEW YORK — To save power, NASA has switched off another scientific instrument on its long-running Voyager 2 spacecraft.

    The space agency said Tuesday that Voyager 2’s plasma science instrument — designed to measure the flow of charged atoms — was powered down in late September so the spacecraft can keep exploring for as long as possible, expected into the 2030s.

    NASA turned off a suite of instruments on Voyager 2 and its twin Voyager 1 after they explored the gas giant planets in the 1980s. Both are currently in interstellar space, or the space between stars. The plasma instrument on Voyager 1 stopped working long ago and was finally shut down in 2007.

    Four remaining instruments on Voyager 2 will continue collecting information about magnetic fields and particles. Its goal is to study the swaths of space beyond the sun’s protective bubble.

    Launched in 1977, Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to visit Uranus and Neptune. It’s currently more than 12 billion miles (19.31 billion kilometers) from Earth. Voyager 1 is over 15 billion miles (24.14 billion kilometers) from Earth.

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    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • The Polaris Dawn Spaceflight Was More Than Just a Billionaire Joyride

    The Polaris Dawn Spaceflight Was More Than Just a Billionaire Joyride

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    A white spacecraft, lightly toasted like a marshmallow and smelling of singed metal, fell out of the night sky early on Sunday morning and splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico not all that far from Key West.

    The darkened waters there were carefully chosen from among dozens of potential landing spots near Florida. This is because the wind and seas were predicted to be especially calm and serene as the Crew Dragon spacecraft named Resilience floated down to the sea and bobbed gently, awaiting the arrival of a recovery ship.

    Inside waited a crew of four—commander Jared Isaacman, a billionaire who funded the mission and had just completed his second private spaceflight; SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, who were the company’s first employees to fly into orbit; and pilot Kidd Poteet.

    They were happy to be home.

    “We are mission complete,” Isaacman said after the spacecraft landed.

    A Significant Success

    Their mission, certainly the most ambitious private spaceflight to date, was a total success. Named Polaris Dawn, the mission flew to an altitude of 1,408.1 kilometers on the first day of the flight. This was the highest Earth-orbit mission ever flown and the farthest humans have traveled from our planet since the Apollo missions more than half a century ago.

    Photograph: SpaceX/Getty Images

    Then, on the third day of the flight, the four crew members donned space suits designed and developed within the past two years. After venting the cabin’s atmosphere into space, first Isaacman, and then Gillis, spent several minutes extending their bodies out of the Dragon spacecraft. This was the first-ever private spacewalk in history.

    Although this foray into space largely repeated what the Soviet Union, and then the United States, performed in the mid-1960s, with tethered spacewalks, it nonetheless was significant. These commercial space suits cost a fraction of government suits and can be considered version 1.0 of suits that could one day enable many people to walk in space, on the moon, and eventually Mars.

    Finally, on the mission’s final full day in space, the Dragon spacecraft demonstrated connectivity with a mesh of Starlink satellites in low-Earth orbit. The crew held a 40-minute, uninterrupted video call with flight operators back at SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California. During that time, according to the company, Dragon maintained contact via laser links to Starlink satellites through 16 firings of the spacecraft’s Draco thrusters.

    This test demonstrated the viability of using the thousands of Starlink satellites in orbit as a means of providing high-speed Internet to people and spacecraft in space.

    Wait, Isn’t This Just a Billionaire Joyride?

    Some people have misunderstood the mission. They saw in Isaacman a financial tech billionaire gratifying his desire to go to space, inside a crew vehicle built by Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX. Thus, this appeared to be just a roller-coaster ride for the ultrarich and famous—for those who could not sate their thrill-seeking with the pleasures attainable on planet Earth.

    I understand this viewpoint, but I do not share it.

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    Eric Berger, Ars Technica

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  • Boeing Starliner Returns Home to an Uncertain Future

    Boeing Starliner Returns Home to an Uncertain Future

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    Until now, NASA has paid Boeing roughly $2.7 billion of the $4.6 billion total potential value of its commercial crew contract, according to Finch. The Starliner contract NASA awarded Boeing in 2014 originally had a maximum value of $4.2 billion, but contract modifications since 2014 have added $400 million to the deal. Most of the money NASA has paid Boeing to date has been for Starliner development costs, while the remaining funds under the contract cover future service payments for operational flights.

    So, if Boeing walked away from Starliner, the company would be giving up nearly $1.9 billion on potential revenue from NASA, still more than the $1.6 billion in losses it has taken on the program so far.

    Ready for Departure

    Since deciding last month to fly Starliner home without its crew, NASA managers have reviewed plans for the spacecraft to depart the space station in autopilot mode. The preparations included updating Starliner’s software parameters to enable the autonomous undocking. Then, last Thursday, NASA officials convened a Flight Readiness Review and cleared Starliner to return to Earth.

    “Everybody polled ‘go’ in that review, pending the operational status of the vehicle and the landing weather,” said Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager. “So we’re proceeding toward undock and landing on Friday.”

    As Starliner approached the space station on June 6, five of the ship’s 28 Reaction Control System (RCS) thrusters dropped offline, requiring Wilmore to take manual control while ground controllers tried to recover some of the control jets.

    Engineers tested thrusters and analyzed data for over two months to track down the cause of the thrusters’ failure. Ground teams were able to bring four of the five failed thrusters back online, but NASA officials could not assure themselves the same thrusters, or perhaps more, won’t overheat again and fail as Starliner departs the station and heads for reentry.

    Investigators found that repeated pulses of the RCS jets led to rising temperatures in the thrusters. This likely caused a seal in each of the problematic thrusters to bulge and deform, restricting the flow of propellant, according to NASA officials.

    Stich said Wednesday that possible solutions to the problem on future Starliner flights range from changing the way the ship fires its thrusters to prevent overheating, to changing the seal design, to modifying the doghouse-shaped propulsion pods where the thrusters reside on the spacecraft’s service module. The design of these “doghouses” cause them to retain heat like a thermos, exacerbating the thermal problem.

    Boeing and NASA also must resolve helium leaks that plagued the Starliner test flight. Engineers believe a separate set of degraded seals is causing helium leaks, which the spacecraft uses to pressurize the propulsion system and drive propellants into its thrusters. Ground controllers have closed valves to isolate the helium system and close off the leaks while Starliner has been docked at the space station. Those isolation valves will open before Starliner departs the space station, but NASA officials say the spacecraft has more than enough helium for the six-hour flight from undocking until landing Friday night.

    Wilmore and Williams originally planned to stay at the space station for around eight days, but will now remain as residents on the complex until February, when they will come home in a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.

    Dana Weigel, NASA’s ISS program manager, said Wednesday that the Starliner astronauts, both veterans of previous six-month stays on the space station, are fully trained to perform spacewalks, operate the lab’s robotic arm, and conduct maintenance and scientific experiments. They will be fully integrated into the space station’s long-duration crew, which usually includes seven residents. With the Starliner crew’s extended stay, the station crew size has grown to nine people.

    The crew shakeup forced NASA to remove two astronauts from the next SpaceX Dragon crew flight launching to the ISS later this month, leaving two seats empty to accommodate Wilmore and Williams when the Dragon spacecraft returns to Earth early next year. This upcoming SpaceX crew rotation will bring the station crew size back to its usual complement of seven US astronauts and Russian cosmonauts.

    This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.

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    Stephen Clark, Ars Technica

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  • Christa McAuliffe, still pioneering, is first woman with a statue on New Hampshire capitol grounds

    Christa McAuliffe, still pioneering, is first woman with a statue on New Hampshire capitol grounds

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    CONCORD, N.H. — Decades after she was picked to be America’s first teacher in space, Christa McAuliffe is still a pioneer — this time as the first woman to be memorialized on the grounds of New Hampshire’s Statehouse, in the city where she taught high school.

    McAuliffe was 37 when she was killed, one of the seven crew members aboard the Challenger when the space shuttle broke apart on live TV on Jan. 28, 1986. She didn’t have the chance to give the lessons she had planned to teach from space. But people are still learning from her.

    “Beyond the tragedy, her legacy is a very positive one,” said Benjamin Victor, the sculptor from Boise, Idaho, whose work is being unveiled in Concord on Monday, on what would have been McAuliffe’s 76th birthday. “And so it’s something that can always be remembered and should be.”

    The 8-foot-tall (2.4-meter) bronze likeness atop a granite pedestal is believed to be the first full statue of McAuliffe, known for her openness to experimental learning. Her motto was: “I touch the future, I teach.”

    “To see a hero like Christa McAuliffe memorialized in this way will undoubtedly inspire the next generation of students each time they visit the New Hampshire Statehouse,” Gov. Chris Sununu said in a statement. His executive order enabled the McAuliffe statue to join statues of leaders such as Daniel Webster, John Stark and President Franklin Pierce.

    McAuliffe was picked from among 11,000 candidates to be the first teacher and private citizen in space. Beyond a public memorial at the Statehouse plaza on Jan. 31, 1986, the Concord school district and the city, population 44,500, have observed the Challenger anniversary quietly through the years, partly to respect the privacy of her family. Christa and Steven McAuliffe’s son and daughter were very young at the time she died and was buried in a local cemetery. Steven McAuliffe wanted the children to grow up in the community normally.

    But there are other memorials, dozens of schools and a library named for McAuliffe, as well as scholarships and a commemorative coin. A science museum in Concord is dedicated to her and to native son Alan Shepard, the first American in space. The auditorium is named for her at Concord High School, where she taught American history, law, economics and a self-designed course called “The American Woman.” Students rush past a painting of her in her astronaut uniform.

    In 2017-2018, two educators-turned-astronauts at the International Space Station recorded some of the lessons that McAuliffe had planned to teach, on Newton’s laws of motion, liquids in microgravity, effervescence and chromatography. NASA then posted “Christa McAuliffe’s Lost Lessons” online, a resource for students everywhere.

    Victor comes from a family of educators, including his mother, with whom he’s shared a number of discussions about McAuliffe as he’s worked on the statue — including his recollection of watching the Challenger disaster on television as a second-grader in Bakersfield, California.

    “It was so sad, but I guess all these years later, the silver lining has been the way her legacy has continued on,” he said.

    Victor has sculpted four of the statues in the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall, the most of any living artist. To represent McAuliffe, he looked at many images and videos, and he met with Barbara Morgan, who participated in the Teacher in Space program as backup to McAuliffe for the Challenger mission. Morgan also lives in Boise and let him borrow her uniform, the same as the one McAuliffe wore.

    “Getting to talk to Barbara about Christa, just learning even more, it’s just something that’s irreplaceable,” Victor said. “Just to hear about her character. It’s just amazing.”

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  • NASA, Blue Origin Prepare for New Glenn Launch of Mars Mission

    NASA, Blue Origin Prepare for New Glenn Launch of Mars Mission

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    NASA and Blue Origin are preparing for the agency’s ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) mission, which begins on the inaugural launch of the company’s New Glenn rocket.

    The mission will study the solar wind’s interaction with the magnetosphere on Mars.

    Blue Origin is targeting no earlier than Sunday, October 13th, for the launch of New Glenn-1 from Space Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Central Florida.

    The ESCAPADE mission will use two identical spacecraft to investigate how the solar wind interacts with the hybrid magnetosphere on Mars and how this interaction drives the planet’s atmospheric escape.

    ESCAPADE is the first multi-spacecraft orbital science mission to the Red Planet. Its twin orbiters will take simultaneous observations from different locations around Mars. According to NASA, the observations will reveal the planet’s real-time response to space weather and how the Martian magnetosphere changes over time.

    The mission is funded by NASA’s Heliophysics Division and is part of the NASA Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration program.

    The ESCAPADE mission is led by the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory, and the spacecraft is designed by Rocket Lab. The agency’s Launch Services Program, based at NASA Kennedy, secured the launch service under the VADR (Venture-class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare) contract.

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  • How to See a Spacecraft Slingshot Around Earth on Monday Night

    How to See a Spacecraft Slingshot Around Earth on Monday Night

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    The European Space Agency says it is closely watching and adjusting the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) as it attempts to whip the spacecraft around the moon and the Earth as part of a multipart journey towards the largest planet in our solar system.

    JUICE will perform the risky maneuver between August 19 and 20; the craft will be closest to the Earth at around 12:00 a.m. ET (UTC +02:00) on August 20.

    The ESA said in a statement that the craft’s intended acrobatics — a lunar-Earth flyby and a double gravity assist maneuver — will amount to a “double world first.” The gravity assist will alter the research vehicle’s speed and direction, but getting it right will be tricky, the agency explained. Even the tiniest error “could take JUICE off course and spell the end of the mission,” the ESA wrote.

    A diagram of JUICE’s  lunar-Earth flyby © European Space Agency

    JUICE kicked off its trip with a launch in April 2023 and a trajectory adjustment seven months later. As it navigates past Earth and performs tests of onboard instruments, the craft will harness the planet’s gravity to slow down and “bend” towards Venus, looping around the planet in August 2025 before heading back towards Earth. (The slowdown is necessary in order to limit the amount of fuel needed to ease JUICE into orbit around other planets).

    Then, the craft will perform two more loops around Earth (one in September 2026 and another January 2029) in order to reach the correct path and speed to enter Jupiter’s orbit in 2031. From there, JUICE will observe the fifth planet from the sun and its icy moons.

    JUICE's multipart trip to Jupiter
    JUICE’s multipart trip to Jupiter © European Space Agency

    Ignacio Tanco, JUICE’s spacecraft operations manager, said the lunar-Earth flyby will be like “passing through a very narrow corridor, very, very quickly: pushing the accelerator to the maximum when the margin at the side of the road is just millimetres.”

    Only the most fortunate JUICE heads will be able to spot the craft using a telescope or high-powered binoculars, the ESA said, when it flies “directly over Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean.” The agency shared the craft’s trajectory data here. An easier way to follow along, however, will be to monitor the ESA’s blog or X (formerly Twitter) account, which is where the agency plans to post photos taken by JUICE’s two monitoring cameras during the flyby on Monday night and early Tuesday morning.

    Venus and Jupiter aren’t the only planets under watch by the ESA’s spacecraft. The agency’s Mars Express Orbiter recently returned stunning images of the red planet’s “snaking scar.” As for the ESA’s U.S. counterpart, NASA is looking for private-sector help to get its abandoned rover to the moon. NASA has also sought help from private space companies as it plots the destruction of the one-million-pound International Space Station, after it retires the station at the end of 2030.

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    Harri Weber

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  • NASA Nears Decision Time on Boeing Starliner’s Fate

    NASA Nears Decision Time on Boeing Starliner’s Fate

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    With no consensus on the safety of the Starliner crew capsule, NASA officials said Wednesday they need another week or two before deciding whether to bring two astronauts back to Earth on Boeing’s spacecraft or extend their stay on the International Space Station until next year.

    Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, stricken by suspect thrusters and helium leaks, is taking up a valuable parking spot at the space station. It needs to depart the orbiting research complex, with or without its two-person crew, before the launch of SpaceX’s next Dragon crew mission to the station, scheduled for September 24.

    “We can juggle things and make things work if we need to extend, but it’s getting a lot harder,” said Ken Bowersox, associate administrator of NASA’s spaceflight operations directorate. “With the consumables we’re using, with the need for the use of the ports for cargo missions, those types of things, we’re reaching a point where that last week in August, we really should be making a call, if not sooner.”

    Last week, NASA officials said they expected to make a decision in mid-August—presumably this week—but Bowersox said Wednesday NASA probably won’t make the final call on what to do with the Starliner spacecraft until the end of next week, or the beginning of the week of August 26.

    “We’ve got time available before we bring Starliner home and we want to use that time wisely,” Bowersox said.

    NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams launched inside Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft on June 5. Their mission is the first crew test flight on Boeing’s capsule before NASA clears Starliner for regular crew rotation flights to the space station. But after software setbacks, parachute concerns, and previous problems with its propulsion system, Boeing’s Starliner program is running more than four years behind SpaceX’s Dragon crew spacecraft, which flew astronauts to the station for the first time in 2020.

    And now, there’s a significant chance the Starliner crew won’t come home in the spacecraft they launched in. Bowersox, a former astronaut, said NASA brought in propulsion experts from other programs to take a fresh look at the thruster issue.

    Engineers are still investigating the root cause of why five of Starliner’s 28 reaction control system thrusters, supplied by Aerojet Rocketdyne, failed during approach to the space station the day after launch. The thrusters overheated as they pulsed over and over again to fine-tune the ship’s rendezvous with the station. Tests of a similar control jet on the ground suggested a Teflon seal in an internal valve could swell at higher temperatures, restricting the flow of propellant to the thruster.

    Four of the five thrusters that failed before Starliner docked at the station have recovered and generated near-normal thrust levels during test-firings last month. But many engineers at NASA aren’t convinced the thrusters will work normally on Starliner’s journey from the space station back to Earth. These control jets are needed to keep the spacecraft pointed in the right direction when four larger rocket engines fire for the deorbit burn to steer the capsule on a trajectory back into the atmosphere for landing.

    Rapid pulses of the thrusters, coupled with a long firing of the four larger engines, could raise temperatures inside four doghouse-shaped propulsion pods around the perimeter of Starliner’s service module. Once the deorbit burn is complete, Starliner will jettison the service module to burn up in the atmosphere, and its crew module will use a different set of thrusters to guide its reentry. Then, it will deploy parachutes to slow for landing, likely at White Sands, New Mexico.

    Elevated Risk

    Bowersox said the outside engineers brought in from other NASA centers have, so far, largely agreed with the assessments made by the team working full time on Starliner.

    “There are a lot of folks out there that have worked with similar thrusters, and have seen similar issues,” he said. “So we’ve gotten feedback on what we’re seeing, and a lot of it is confirming what we thought was causing the signatures that we were observing on orbit. It’s really tough when you don’t have the actual hardware to look at, when it’s up in space.”

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    Stephen Clark, Ars Technica

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  • Humans Are Going to the Moon’s South Pole. This Is How They’ll Drive There

    Humans Are Going to the Moon’s South Pole. This Is How They’ll Drive There

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    In 2030, about six years from now, American astronauts will return to the surface of the moon. When they land, they’ll face the same challenge as millions of freshly licensed teenagers the world over: They’ll need a sweet ride.

    The lunar mission, called Artemis V, is slated to send two astronauts to the lunar surface to conduct six days of science experiments at the moon’s south pole. To do the job, NASA is commissioning them a set of wheels—emphasis on wheels.

    This spring, NASA announced that three groups had been selected to carry out year-long studies of what it will take to develop a Lunar Terrain Vehicle, or LTV. The groups, two of which are a consortium of companies, included two tire companies: Goodyear and Michelin. The other competitor, Venturi Astrolab, has debuted its own lunar wheel design.

    The contract finalist will likely be announced in about a year, and whoever goes on to design the LTV will face some serious challenges. NASA has asked that the rover not only be ready to roll with two astronauts on board, but also to stay behind on the moon for years to perform scientific experiments and commercial work, even without humans present.

    Competing companies developing lunar tires are converging on airless designs.

    PHOTOGRAPH: VENTURI, MICHELIN AND BRIDGESTONE PRESS

    Stick your standard rubber car tires on the moon—especially at its south pole in the middle of the lunar night, where temperatures can reach –300 degrees Fahrenheit—and nothing good will happen. The tires will sink into the loose lunar soil, and the intense solar radiation on the moon, which lacks a protective atmosphere, will instantly begin to break down the rubber. Then the extreme cold will freeze the tires, rendering them unable to deform or compress, and making them harder to roll. They’ll get brittle and shatter.

    The issues only get worse over time. The moon’s soil, or lunar regolith, is extra abrasive, says Florian Vilcot, an innovation expert and designer at Michelin. That abrasiveness threatens to quickly tear up any unequipped material. That’s particularly important for the LTV because Michelin is designing a tire to last 10 years and travel more than 6,200 miles. (By comparison, the Lunar Rover Vehicles or “moon buggies” involved in the Apollo missions in the early 1970s each traveled about 18 miles.)

    Additionally, NASA documents outlining the required specifications of the LTVs note that while the agency doesn’t plan for the vehicle to jump, “there will be momentary unplanned instances” where a wheel just might have to leave the surface of the moon.

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    Aarian Marshall

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  • NASA Is ‘Evaluating All Options’ to Get the Boeing Starliner Crew Home

    NASA Is ‘Evaluating All Options’ to Get the Boeing Starliner Crew Home

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    It has now been eight weeks since Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft launched into orbit on an Atlas V rocket, bound for the International Space Station. At the time NASA officials said the two crew members, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, could return to Earth as soon as June 14, just eight days later.

    Yes, there had been some problems on Starliner’s ride to the space station that involved helium leaks and failing thrusters. But officials said they were relatively minor and sought to downplay them. “Those are pretty small, really, issues to deal with,” Mark Nappi, vice president and manager of Boeing’s Commercial Crew Program, said during a post-docking news conference. “We’ll figure them out for the next mission. I don’t see these as significant at all.”

    But days turned to weeks, and weeks turned to months as NASA and Boeing continued to study the two technical problems. Of these issues, the more pressing concern was the failure of multiple reaction control system thrusters that are essential to steering Starliner during its departure from the space station and setting up a critical engine burn to enter Earth’s atmosphere.

    In the last few weeks, ground teams from NASA and Boeing completed testing of a thruster on a test stand at White Sands, New Mexico. Then, last weekend, Boeing and NASA fired the spacecraft’s thrusters in orbit to check their performance while docked at the space station. NASA has said preliminary results from these tests were helpful.

    Dragon Becomes a Real Option

    One week ago, the last time NASA officials spoke to the media, the agency’s program manager for commercial crew, Steve Stich, would not be drawn into discussing what would happen should NASA conclude that Starliner’s thrusters were not reliable enough for the return journey to Earth.

    “Our prime option is to complete the mission,” Stich said one week ago. “There are a lot of good reasons to complete this mission and bring Butch and Suni home on Starliner. Starliner was designed, as a spacecraft, to have the crew in the cockpit.”

    For a long time, it seemed almost certain that the astronauts would return to Earth inside Starliner.

    However, there has been a lot of recent activity at NASA, Boeing, and SpaceX that suggests that Wilmore and Williams could come home aboard a Crew Dragon spacecraft rather than Starliner. Due to the critical importance of this mission, Ars is sharing what we know as of Thursday afternoon.

    One informed source said it was greater than a 50-50 chance that the crew would come back on Dragon. Another source said it was significantly more likely than not they would. To be clear, NASA has not made a final decision. This probably will not happen until at least next week. It is likely that Jim Free, NASA’s associate administrator, will make the call.

    Asked if it was now more likely than not that Starliner’s crew would return on Dragon, NASA spokesperson Josh Finch told Ars on Thursday evening, “NASA is evaluating all options for the return of agency astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams from the International Space Station as safely as possible. No decisions have been made, and the agency will continue to provide updates on its planning.”

    Putting Together Puzzle Pieces

    What follows are some data points that Ars can confidently report based on multiple sources:

    • NASA keeps delaying a decision. A Flight Readiness Review meeting had been scheduled for today, August 1, several days in advance. However, it was canceled. Instead, NASA put out a vague blog update on Thursday stating, “Following the completion of Starliner’s return planning, which is expected to continue into next week, more information will be shared about the agency’s return readiness review preparations and subsequent media briefing.” So maybe the meeting will take place next week.
    • NASA issued a $266,678 task award to SpaceX on July 14 for a “special study for emergency response.” NASA said this study was not directly related to Starliner’s problems, but two sources told Ars it really was. Although the study entailed work on flying more than four crew members home on Crew Dragon—a scenario related to Frank Rubio and the Soyuz MS-22 leaks—it also allowed SpaceX to study flying Dragon home with six passengers, a regular crew complement in addition to Wilmore and Williams.
    • SpaceX has been actively working on a scenario in which two or four astronauts launch on board Crew 9. (A normal crew is four) This mission has a nominal launch date of August 18, but it could well be delayed. SpaceX has already identified flight suits that would fit Wilmore and Williams, allowing them to fly home on the Crew-8 spacecraft (presently docked to the space station) or the Crew-9 vehicle. It is unclear how crews would be assigned to the two Dragon return flights. It is possible, if four astronauts launch on Crew 9, that five people could fly home on each of the two Dragons.
    • Two sources told Ars that in meetings this week at NASA field centers, there have been vigorous discussions about whether or not to fly crew home on Starliner. Multiple groups remain “no” on Starliner as of Wednesday. It is unclear how this will be resolved. Some engineers believe that if there are questions about Starliner, then NASA should opt for the safe course—flying on Crew Dragon, which has safely launched 13 times and landed 12 times.

    The Toughest of Calls

    NASA officials face a difficult decision. Because there is still at least a small risk to flying Starliner in its present condition, the space agency and Boeing have tested the thrusters as thoroughly as possible while the spacecraft is docked to the space station. This testing was intended to “buy down” these risks. But while the data is good, it has not addressed all of NASA’s concerns.

    So what will the space agency do? Starliner probably could make it back to Earth safely. But there appears to be some reasonable doubt that Starliner will come back safely. If NASA defers to its fallback plan, flying on Dragon, it may spell the end of the Starliner program. During the development and testing of Starliner, the company has already lost $1.6 billion. Reflying a crew test flight mission, which likely would be necessary should Starliner return autonomously, would cost much more. Boeing might opt to cancel Starliner and leave NASA with just a single provider of crew transportation. That would be painful for both NASA and Boeing.

    But the alternative—Starliner not coming home safely with the crew inside—is far, far worse. This is the risk-reward decision that Free, Stich, and other NASA officials ultimately must balance in the coming days.

    This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.

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    Eric Berger, Ars Technica

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  • China’s spacecraft carrying rocks from the far side of the moon leaves the lunar surface

    China’s spacecraft carrying rocks from the far side of the moon leaves the lunar surface

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    BEIJING — China says a spacecraft carrying rock and soil samples from the far side of the moon has lifted off from the lunar surface to start its journey back to Earth.

    The ascender of the Chang’e-6 probe lifted off Tuesday morning Beijing time and entered a preset orbit around the moon, the China National Space Administration said.

    The Chang’e-6 probe was launched last month and its lander touched down on the far side of the moon Sunday.

    Xinhua News Agency cited the space agency as saying the spacecraft stowed the samples it had gathered in a container inside the ascender of the probe as planned.

    The container will be transferred to a reentry capsule that is due to return to Earth in the deserts of China’s Inner Mongolia region about June 25.

    Missions to the moon’s far side are more difficult because it doesn’t face the Earth, requiring a relay satellite to maintain communications. The terrain is also more rugged, with fewer flat areas to land.

    Xinhua said the probe’s landing site was the South Pole-Aitken Basin, an impact crater created more than 4 billion years ago that is 13 kilometers (8 miles) deep and has a diameter of 2,500 kilometers (1,500 miles).

    It is the oldest and largest of such craters on the moon, so may provide the earliest information about it, Xinhua said, adding that the huge impact may have ejected materials from deep below the surface.

    The mission is the sixth in the Chang’e moon exploration program, which is named after a Chinese moon goddess. It is the second designed to bring back samples, following the Chang’e 5, which did so from the near side in 2020.

    The moon program is part of a growing rivalry with the U.S. — still the leader in space exploration — and others, including Japan and India. China has put its own space station in orbit and regularly sends crews there.

    The emerging global power aims to put a person on the moon before 2030, which would make it the second nation after the United States to do so. America is planning to land astronauts on the moon again — for the first time in more than 50 years — though NASA pushed the target date back to 2026 earlier this year.

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  • A Chinese spacecraft lands on moon’s far side to collect rocks in growing space rivalry with US

    A Chinese spacecraft lands on moon’s far side to collect rocks in growing space rivalry with US

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    BEIJING — A Chinese spacecraft landed on the far side of the moon Sunday to collect soil and rock samples that could provide insights into differences between the less-explored region and the better-known near side.

    The landing module touched down at 6:23 a.m. Beijing time in a huge crater known as the South Pole-Aitken Basin, the China National Space Administration said.

    The mission is the sixth in the Chang’e moon exploration program, which is named after a Chinese moon goddess. It is the second designed to bring back samples, following the Chang’e 5, which did so from the near side in 2020.

    The moon program is part of a growing rivalry with the U.S. — still the leader in space exploration — and others, including Japan and India. China has put its own space station in orbit and regularly sends crews there.

    The emerging global power aims to put a person on the moon before 2030, which would make it the second nation after the United States to do so. America is planning to land astronauts on the moon again — for the first time in more than 50 years — though NASA pushed the target date back to 2026 earlier this year.

    U.S. efforts to use private sector rockets to launch spacecraft have been repeatedly delayed. Last-minute computer trouble nixed the planned launch of Boeing’s first astronaut flight Saturday.

    Earlier Saturday, a Japanese billionaire called off his plan to orbit the moon because of uncertainty over the development of a mega rocket by SpaceX. NASA is planning to use the rocket to send its astronauts to the moon.

    In China’s current mission, the lander is to use a mechanical arm and a drill to gather up to 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of surface and underground material for about two days.

    An ascender atop the lander will then take the samples in a metal vacuum container back to another module that is orbiting the moon. The container will be transferred to a re-entry capsule that is due to return to Earth in the deserts of China’s Inner Mongolia region about June 25.

    Missions to the moon’s far side are more difficult because it doesn’t face the Earth, requiring a relay satellite to maintain communications. The terrain is also more rugged, with fewer flat areas to land.

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  • How to Watch the Boeing Starliner Launch

    How to Watch the Boeing Starliner Launch

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    It’s been a rough few years for Boeing, but now the company is about to fly closer to the sun than ever before. After nearly a decade of development and delays, the first crewed launch of the Boeing Starliner spacecraft is happening today. Here’s how to watch it live.

    The launch is a jointly planned event between Boeing and NASA, and is scheduled for Monday, May 6, at 10:34 pm EDT, 7:34 PDT. You can watch the livestream of the launch a few ways. It will stream on NASA’s official website and YouTube channel, as well as on NASA+, the agency’s subscription service. If you’re on mobile, the stream is also available on the NASA app. You can also watch it right here.

    The livestream starts about four hours before the planned launch time, at 6:30 pm Eastern, 3:30 Pacific.

    The launch of the Starliner has been a long time coming. With this highly anticipated liftoff, Boeing will officially be the second company (after SpaceX) to partner with NASA to carry humans into space. The Starliner will be crewed by NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who will head to the International Space Station. The plan is for the astronauts to remain there for a week or so, then return to planet Earth, reentering the atmosphere aboard the same craft and then landing under parachutes.

    If this mission succeeds without a hitch, it will also likely be a welcome hit of good news for the troubled aviation company. Boeing has drawn a lot of presumably unwanted attention in recent months, as an array of technical malfunctions on its commercial airline flights have terrified travelers and made headlines. These events come not long after two of Boeing’s 737 Max planes crashed in 2018 and 2019. Clearly, Boeing is eager to claw back some public goodwill and write a whole new chapter centered around a future of bringing more people into space.

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    Boone Ashworth

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  • Watch Live: Boeing’s Nail-Biting First Crewed Launch Attempt to the ISS

    Watch Live: Boeing’s Nail-Biting First Crewed Launch Attempt to the ISS

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    It’s been over a decade in the making, but Boeing is finally ready to launch its first crewed test flight to the International Space Station (ISS) as part of its agreement with NASA.

    Studio Thought Seed of Chucky Was ‘Too Gay, Too Funny’

    Boeing Starliner spacecraft is set for launch on Monday at 10:34 p.m. ET from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The crew capsule will ride atop United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket, carrying NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the space station and back.

    NASA will broadcast the launch live on its website and the space agency’s YouTube channel, and you can also tune in through the feed below. The launch coverage will begin at 6:30 p.m. ET.

    NASA’s Boeing Starliner Crew Flight Test Launch

    Boeing’s Crewed Flight Test is part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, and is meant to transport crew and cargo to and from the ISS under a $4.3 billion contract with the space agency. NASA’s other commercial partner, SpaceX, just launched its eighth crew to the space station.

    It’s been a rough journey for Boeing to make it to this point. Starliner’s first uncrewed test flight in 2019 managed to reach space, but a software automation glitch caused the spacecraft to burn excess fuel, preventing it from making it to the ISS. Starliner miscalculated its location in space due to a glitch caused by a faulty mission elapsed timer.

    The botched first flight prompted NASA to call for a second test flight of the empty spacecraft before a crew rides on board. In May 2022, Boeing completed the Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2), the second uncrewed test flight of Starliner, setting the stage for a crewed test flight. But OFT-2 suffered a few hiccups, including the failure of a thruster used for orbital maneuvering.

    Boeing’s crewed Starliner launch was initially set for February 2023, then postponed to late April, and finally rescheduled for July 21, 2023. A few weeks before liftoff, however, the company announced that it was standing down from the launch attempt to address newfound issues with the crew vehicle.

    The program has suffered from a slew of problems and delays from the start, which makes Monday’s launch an absolute nail-biter.

    For more spaceflight in your life, follow us on X and bookmark Gizmodo’s dedicated Spaceflight page.

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    Passant Rabie

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  • How NASA Repaired Voyager 1 From 15 Billion Miles Away

    How NASA Repaired Voyager 1 From 15 Billion Miles Away

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    Throughout the five months of troubleshooting, Voyager’s ground team continued to receive signals indicating the spacecraft was still alive. But until Saturday, they lacked insight into specific details about the status of Voyager 1.

    “It’s pretty much just the way we left it,” Spilker said. “We’re still in the initial phases of analyzing all of the channels and looking at their trends. Some of the temperatures went down a little bit with this period of time that’s gone on, but we’re pretty much seeing everything we had hoped for. And that’s always good news.”

    Relocating Code

    Through their investigation, Voyager’s ground team discovered that a single chip responsible for storing a portion of the FDS memory had stopped working, probably due to either a cosmic ray hit or a failure of aging hardware. This affected some of the computer’s software code.

    “That took out a section of memory,” Spilker said. “What they have to do is relocate that code into a different portion of the memory, and then make sure that anything that uses those codes, those subroutines, know to go to the new location of memory, for access and to run it.”

    Only about 3 percent of the FDS memory was corrupted by the bad chip, so engineers needed to transplant that code into another part of the memory bank. But no single location is large enough to hold the section of code in its entirety, NASA said.

    So the Voyager team divided the code into sections for storage in different places in the FDS. This wasn’t just a copy-and-paste job. Engineers needed to modify some of the code to make sure it will all work together. “Any references to the location of that code in other parts of the FDS memory needed to be updated as well,” NASA said in a statement.

    Newer NASA missions have hardware and software simulators on the ground, where engineers can test new procedures to make sure they do no harm when they uplink commands to the real spacecraft. Due to its age, Voyager doesn’t have any ground simulators, and much of the mission’s original design documentation remains in paper form and hasn’t been digitized.

    “It was really eyes-only to look at the code,” Spilker said. “So we had to triple check. Everybody was looking through and making sure we had all of the links coming together.”

    This was just the first step in restoring Voyager 1 to full functionality. “We were pretty sure it would work, but until it actually happened, we didn’t know 100 percent for sure,” Spilker said.

    “The reason we didn’t do everything in one step is that there was a very limited amount of memory we could find quickly, so we prioritized one data mode (the engineering data mode), and relocated only the code to restore that mode,” said Jeff Mellstrom, a JPL engineer who leads the Voyager 1 “tiger team” tasked with overcoming this problem.

    “The next step, to relocate the remaining three actively used science data modes, is essentially the same,” Mellstrom said in a written response to Ars. “The main difference is the available memory constraint is now even tighter. We have ideas where we could relocate the code, but we haven’t yet fully assessed the options or made a decision. These are the first steps we will start this week.”

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    Stephen Clark, Ars Technica

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  • Elon Musk’s Latest Mars Pitch Has Potential

    Elon Musk’s Latest Mars Pitch Has Potential

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    Elon Musk has been talking publicly about his sweeping vision for Mars settlement for nearly eight years now, dating to a speech in Guadalajara, Mexico, in September 2016.

    This weekend, at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in South Texas, Musk once again took up the mantle of his “making life multiplanetary” cause. Addressing employees at the location of the company’s Starship factory, Musk spoke about the “high urgency” needed to extend the “light of consciousness” beyond Earth. That is not because humanity’s home planet is a lost cause or should not be preserved. Rather, Musk said, he does not want humanity to remain a one-planet civilization that will, inevitably, face some calamity that will end the species.

    All of this is fairly familiar territory for spaceflight enthusiasts—and observers of Musk. But during the past eight years he has become an increasingly controversial and polarizing figure. Based on his behavior, many people will dismiss Musk’s Mars comments as those of a megalomaniac. At least in regard to spaceflight, however, that would be wrong. Musk’s multiplanetary ambitions today are more credible because SpaceX has taken steps toward doing what he said the company would do.

    SpaceX has real hardware today and has completed three test flights. A fourth is possible next month.

    “It’s surreal, but it’s real,” Musk said this weekend, describing the audacious Mars vision.

    The Booster and Ship

    As part of his 45-minute speech, Musk spoke about the booster for Starship, the upper stage, and the company’s plans to ultimately deliver millions of tons of cargo to Mars for a self-sustaining civilization.

    If thousands of launches seem impossible, Musk noted that SpaceX has completed 327 successful Falcon launches and that 80 percent of those have involved used boosters. This year, he said, SpaceX will launch about 90 percent of the mass sent into orbit from the planet. China will launch about 6 percent, he added, with the remainder of the world accounting for the other 4 percent.

    This kind of performance has given Musk confidence that reusability can be achieved with the Super Heavy booster that powers Starship. On the vehicle’s next test flight, possibly in May, the company will attempt to land the booster on a virtual tower in the Gulf of Mexico. If that landing is precise enough, SpaceX will try to catch the booster on the fifth test flight with the chopstick-like mechanisms on Starship’s massive launch tower.

    “That’s very much a success-oriented schedule, but it is within the realm of possibility,” Musk said. With multiple test flights occurring this year, Musk said the odds of catching the booster with the launch tower this year are 80 to 90 percent.

    It will take longer to land and begin reusing Starship’s upper stage, which must survive the fiery reentry through Earth’s atmosphere. This vehicle broke apart and burned up during its attempt to return through the atmosphere during a flight test in March. On the next flight, Musk said, the goal for Starship’s upper stage is to survive this heating and make a controlled landing in the ocean. At some point this year, he expects SpaceX to achieve this milestone and then begin landing Starships back in Texas next year.

    Building More, Building Bigger

    SpaceX is also building additional ground-based infrastructure and making design upgrades to Starship.

    Musk said the company will construct a second launch tower in Texas to facilitate additional developmental test flights. And by the end of 2025 it intends to have two Starship launch towers in Florida to begin supporting operational launches. Initially, these are likely to support Artemis lunar landing missions for NASA.

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    Eric Berger, Ars Technica

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  • International Space Station Trash May Have Hit This Florida House

    International Space Station Trash May Have Hit This Florida House

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    A few weeks ago, something from the heavens came crashing through the roof of Alejandro Otero’s home, and NASA is on the case.

    In all likelihood, this nearly 2-pound object came from the International Space Station. Otero said it tore through the roof and both floors of his two-story house in Naples, Florida.

    Otero wasn’t home at the time, but his son was there. A Nest home security camera captured the sound of the crash at 2:34 pm local time (19:34 UTC) on March 8. That’s an important piece of information because it is a close match for the time—2:29 pm EST (19:29 UTC)—that US Space Command recorded the reentry of a piece of space debris from the space station. At that time, the object was on a path over the Gulf of Mexico, heading toward southwest Florida.

    This space junk consisted of depleted batteries from the ISS, attached to a cargo pallet that was originally supposed to come back to Earth in a controlled manner. But a series of delays meant this cargo pallet missed its ride back to Earth, so NASA jettisoned the batteries from the space station in 2021 to head for an unguided reentry.

    Otero’s likely encounter with space debris was first reported by WINK News, the CBS affiliate for southwest Florida. Since then, NASA has recovered the debris from the homeowner, according to Josh Finch, an agency spokesperson.

    Engineers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center will analyze the object “as soon as possible to determine its origin,” Finch told Ars. “More information will be available once the analysis is complete.”

    Ars reported on this reentry when it happened on March 8, noting that most of the material from the batteries and the cargo carrier would have likely burned up as they plunged through the atmosphere. Temperatures would have reached several thousand degrees, vaporizing most of the material before it could reach the ground.

    The entire pallet, including the nine disused batteries from the space station’s power system, had a mass of more than 2.6 metric tons (5,800 pounds), according to NASA. Size-wise, it was about twice as tall as a standard kitchen refrigerator. It’s important to note that objects of this mass, or larger, regularly fall to Earth on guided trajectories, but they’re usually failed satellites or spent rocket stages left in orbit after completing their missions.

    In a post on X, Otero said he is waiting for communication from “the responsible agencies” to resolve the cost of damages to his home.

    If the object is owned by NASA, Otero or his insurance company could make a claim against the federal government under the Federal Tort Claims Act, according to Michelle Hanlon, executive director of the Center for Air and Space Law at the University of Mississippi.

    “It gets more interesting if this material is discovered to be not originally from the United States,” she told Ars. “If it is a human-made space object which was launched into space by another country, which caused damage on Earth, that country would be absolutely liable to the homeowner for the damage caused.”

    This could be an issue in this case. The batteries were owned by NASA, but they were attached to a pallet structure launched by Japan’s space agency.

    How This Happened

    At the time of the March 8 reentry, a NASA spokesperson at the Johnson Space Center in Houston said the space agency “conducted a thorough debris analysis assessment on the pallet and has determined it will harmlessly reenter the Earth’s atmosphere.” This was, by far, the most massive object ever tossed overboard from the International Space Station. “We do not expect any portion to have survived reentry,” NASA said.

    Research from other space experts, however, did not match NASA’s statement. The Aerospace Corporation, a federally funded research and development center, says a “general rule of thumb” is that 20 to 40 percent of the mass of a large object will reach the ground. The exact percentage depends on the design of the object, but these nickel-hydrogen batteries were made of metals with relatively high density.

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    Stephen Clark, Ars Technica

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