Monthly Archives: February 2024

SpaceX launched Northrop Grumman's robotic Cygnus spacecraft today (Jan. 30), sending the freighter and its 4 tons of cargo toward the International Space Station.

The Cygnus lifted off atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida today at 12:07 p.m. EST (1707 GMT).

The launch kicked off the 20th operational cargo mission for Cygnus. SpaceX was not involved in the previous 19; they all lifted off atop Antares or Atlas V rockets.

Related: Facts about Cygnus, Northrop Grumman's cargo ship

The Falcon 9's first stage returned to Earth as planned today, acing its touchdown at Cape Canaveral about 8 minutes and 20 seconds after launch. It was the 10th launch and landing for this particular booster, according to a SpaceX mission description.

The Cygnus, meanwhile, deployed from the Falcon 9's upper stage in low Earth orbit around 14 minutes and 45 seconds after launch. The freighter then began making its own way to the International Space Station (ISS).

If all goes according to plan, Cygnus will arrive at the orbiting lab at 4:20 a.m. EST (0920 GMT) on Thursday (Feb. 1). You can watch its rendezvous and docking activities live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA.

Northrop Grumman named this Cygnus vehicle after Patty Hilliard Robertson, a NASA astronaut who died in a private plane crash in 2001. She was selected to the astronaut corps in 1998 and was supposed to fly to the ISS in 2002.

The freighter is packed with more than 8,200 pounds (3,720 kilograms) of supplies and scientific hardware. Among the research gear is a cartilage-growing experiment that could help address joint damage and disease here on Earth and a European Space Agency project that will test the 3D printing of metals in microgravity.

You can learn more about this cargo mission, called NG-20,via NASA's overview.

Cygnus will spend about six months docked to the ISS, then head back down for a fiery destruction in Earth's atmosphere.

One experiment aboard Cygnus, called the Kentucky Re-entry Probe Experiment-2, will gather data during this death dive, taking "measurements to demonstrate a thermal protection system for spacecraft and their contents during re-entry in Earth's atmosphere, which can be difficult to replicate in ground simulations," NASA officials wrote in their NG-20 mission overview.

Cygnus is one of three robotic cargo craft that currently service the ISS, along with SpaceX's Dragon capsule and Russia's Progress vehicle. Progress, like Cygnus, is an expendable spacecraft, but Dragon is reusable, surviving the trip through Earth's atmosphere and splashing down softly under parachutes in the ocean.

Editor's note: This story was corrected at 4:40 p.m. EST on Jan. 30 to state that Patty Hilliard Robertson was supposed to fly to the ISS in 2002 (rather than 2022, as originally written).

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SpaceX launches private Cygnus cargo spacecraft to the ISS (video) - Space.com

The four Axiom Mission 3 astronauts (front row) and the seven Expedition 70 crew members wave to the camera after greeting each other on Jan. 20, 2024. Credit: NASA TV

NASA, Axiom Space, and SpaceX now are targeting no earlier than Tuesday, Feb. 6, for the undocking of Axiom Mission 3 from the International Space Station. Teams are standing down from the Monday, Feb. 5, undocking opportunity of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and Axiom crew members due to weather conditions off the coast of Florida. The next weather review is planned for 3 p.m. EST Sunday, Feb. 4. NASA will provide additional information on coverage.

Learn more about station activities by following thespace station blog,@space_stationand@ISS_Researchon X, as well as theISS FacebookandISS Instagramaccounts.

Get weekly video highlights at:https://roundupreads.jsc.nasa.gov/videoupdate/

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NASA and Partners Now Target Tuesday for Ax-3 Mission Departure - NASA Blogs

The Cygnus cargo craft from Northrop Grumman sits atop the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at its launch pad in Florida. Credit: SpaceX

NASA Television coverage is underway for the launch of Northrop Live NASA coverage is underway for the launch of Northrop Grummans 20th commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station for the agency. The launch of the companys Cygnus spacecraft is scheduled for 12:07 p.m. EST on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

Loaded with more than 8,200 pounds of supplies, the spacecraft will arrive at the orbiting outpost Thursday, Feb. 1. NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli will capture Cygnus using the stations Canadarm2 robotic arm, and NASA astronaut Loral OHara will be acting as a backup. After capture, the spacecraft will be installed on the Unity modules Earth-facing port.

Northrop Grumman named the Cygnus S.S. Patricia Patty Hilliard Robertson in honor of the former NASA astronaut.

Live launch coverage will continue on NASA Television and the agencys website, as well as YouTube, X, Facebook, and NASAs App.

Learn more about station activities by following thespace station blog,@space_stationand@ISS_Researchon X, as well as theISS FacebookandISS Instagramaccounts.

Get weekly video highlights at:https://roundupreads.jsc.nasa.gov/videoupdate/

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Cygnus Cargo Ship Launching on SpaceX Rocket Live on NASA TV - NASA Blogs

ORLANDO, FloridaThe Pentagon has approached SpaceX about potentially taking over Starship for sensitive and potentially dangerous missions as a government-owned, government-operated asset instead of contracting the company to launch payloads.

The company has been exploring its options in responding, Gary Henry, a senior adviser with SpaceX, told the audience at the Space Mobility Conference here Jan. 30.

SpaceX is already on contract for development of the Department of the Air Forces Rocket Cargo mission, with the goal of delivering cargo point to point through space. But this is beyond that plan, Henry says.

We have had conversations and it really came down to specific missions, where its a very specific and sometimes elevated risk or maybe a dangerous use case for the DOD where theyre asking themselves: Do we need to own it as a particular asset SpaceX, can you accommodate that? he says.

Weve been exploring all kinds of options to kind of deal with those questions, he says.

The idea is similar to how the Air Force moves cargo. At times, the service contracts with private carriers to deliver cargo, but for certain critical missions it uses service gray tail aircraft. In this hypothetical case, the military could take a Starship off the line for a specific mission and return it to SpaceX after it is complete.

Col. Eric Felt, director of space architecture for the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration, says there are certain concepts of operation that could be relevant for a government-owned, government-operated space vehicle.

If we can buy the commercial service, thats what were going to do, but there might be some use cases where there needs to be a government-owned, government-operated [vehicle] and that transfer can happen on the fly, Felt says.

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SpaceX: DOD Has Requested Taking Over Starship For Individual Missions - Aviation Week

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has been taking illegal drugs for years, on many occasions alongside the board members and directors of his companies, the Wall Street Journalreportedon Saturday, citing sources who claimed to have either witnessed the drug use or had knowledge of it.

According to the report, Musk has attended some social gatherings in recent years with Tesla board member Joe Gebbia, where he recreationally took ketamine, an anesthetic commonly used to euthanize house pets. Other directors, Antonio Gracias, Kimbal Musk and Steve Jurvetson, have reportedly consumed drugs like ecstasy and LSD with him at several parties, including those held at Hotel El Ganzo, a boutique hotel in Mexico allegedly known for its drug-fueled events.

Read more: Judge Rules Against Elon Musks $55 Billion Compensation Package from Tesla

According to several sources, some of the directors felt pressured to consume drugs with Musk either because refraining could upset the billionaire, or result in themlosing the social capitalof being in the CEOs circle.

Sources told the news outlet that Musks drug use was common knowledge among several current and former Tesla and SpaceX officials, and the volume of his consumption has become concerning in recent years.

However, the companies boards havent investigated Musks alleged drug use nor documented any claims. On the one hand, the use of illegal substances violates antidrug policies at both firms, while on the other, official board minutes could become public, and if they mentioned Musks drug problems, it could put SpaceXs federal contracts and Musks security clearance at risk, the report notes.

Read more: MrBeasts X Experiment on Elon Musks Advice: A Windfall or Facade?

The WSJ already reported on Musks alleged illegal drug use last month, claiming that the CEO has a history of using drugs including cocaine, ecstasy, LSD and psychedelic mushrooms. In response to that news piece, Musk lashed out at WSJ on X, saying that the news outletis not fit to line a parrot cage for bird [poop emoji].Musk noted that he regularly took random drug tests at SpaceX, which he never failed. This claim was backed by his lawyer, Alex Spiro.

Later, Musk also tweeted:If drugs actually helped improve my net productivity over time, I would definitely take them!

Neither Musk nor Spiro have commented on the WSJs latest article so far. Teslas general counsel and a SpaceX spokesman have also opted not to respond to requests for comment.

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Musk took drugs with Tesla and SpaceX execs WSJ - Global Village space

The Cygnus cargo craft from Northrop Grumman launches atop the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from its launch pad in Florida. Credit: NASA TV

A fresh supply of more than 8,200 pounds of scientific investigations and cargo is on its way to the International Space Station on a Northrop Grumman Cygnus resupply spacecraft after launching on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 12:07 p.m. EST Tuesday from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

NASA Televisionand the agencyswebsitecontinue to providelive coverage of the ascent. About 15 minutes after launch, Cygnus will reach its preliminary orbit and is expected to complete its solar arrays deployment about two hours after launch.

Cygnus is scheduled to arrive at the space station around 4:15 a.m. Thursday, Feb. 1.

NASA+, NASA Television, the NASA app, and agencys website will provide live coverage of the spacecrafts approach and arrival beginning at 2:45 a.m.

NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli will capture Cygnus using the stations Canadarm2 robotic arm, and NASA astronaut Loral OHara will be acting as a backup. After capture, the spacecraft will be installed on the Unity modules Earth-facing port.

This is Northrop Grummans 20th contracted resupply mission for NASA.

Learn more about station activities by following thespace station blog,@space_stationand@ISS_Researchon X, as well as theISS FacebookandISS Instagramaccounts.

Get weekly video highlights at:https://roundupreads.jsc.nasa.gov/videoupdate/

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Cygnus Lifts Off Atop SpaceX Rocket to Deliver Station Cargo - NASA Blogs

Rendering of the Starlab commercial space station. Photo: Starlab Space

Starlab, the future commercial space station, will launch on a SpaceX Starship rocket under a new launch agreement announced Wednesday. Starlab Space, a joint venture between Voyager Space and Airbus, announced SpaceX will launch the space station to Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) in a single mission.

Wednesdays announcement did not give a specific timeframe, but said that Starlab will launch before the International Space Station (ISS) is decommissioned. NASA plans to fully utilize the space station through 2030, and issued a request for proposals to deorbit the ISS in September 2023.

Starlab is one of the commercial space stations in the works as a commercial successor to the ISS, to host representatives from space agencies, researchers, and companies. Starlab Space said the station will be fully outfitted on the ground, and ready to permanently host four crew members to conduct microgravity research.

The Starship rocket is not operational and has not reached orbit yet. SpaceX conducted two test flights last year, in April and November.

SpaceXs history of success and reliability led our team to select Starship to orbit Starlab, said Dylan Taylor, chairman and CEO, Voyager Space. SpaceX is the unmatched leader for high-cadence launches and we are proud Starlab will be launched to orbit in a single flight by Starship.

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SpaceXs Starship Rocket to Launch the Starlab Commercial Space Station - Via Satellite

NASA astronaut Nick Hague will be the first Space Force Guardian to launch to the International Space Station.

Hague, who flew twice to space with the U.S. Air Force and NASA before being transferred to Space Force, was named to the SpaceX Crew-9 mission Wednesday (Jan. 31) for an expected International Space Station (ISS) launch in August.

NASA and the Department of Defense have been collaborating since the dawn of the space program. The first U.S. astronauts in 1959 were recruited from the military for the Mercury program, for example. Even today, about two-thirds of NASA astronauts have served in the U.S. Armed Forces, according to Space Force numbers.

Space Force, however, was only established in 2019 as the sixth U.S. military branch. Following his last ISS journey, Hague did a leadership rotation at the Pentagon with Space Force in 2019 as its director of test and evaluation. While still in that role, he transferred in 2021 from Air Force to Space Force.

Related: NASA names astronauts for SpaceX's Crew-9 mission to the ISS

Hague has been to space twice, although the first time was only for a few minutes. His initial ISS launch attempt on Oct. 11, 2018 aborted mid-flight due to a deformed sensor aboard his Russian Soyuz rocket, also carrying Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin.

"This is not the first in-flight emergency that I've been a part of," Hague, who was unharmed from the emergency landing, told reporters a few days after the abort. As evidence, he pointed to his time with the U.S. Air Force as a test pilot and in combat.

Russian engineers addressed the root cause of the rocket failure. Following a new Soyuz launch five months later with NASA astronaut Christina Koch, the trio reached the orbiting lab on March 15, 2019. Hague has accrued 203 days in space already.

Hague's Crew-9 crewmates include cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov of the Roscosmos and two other NASA astronauts: Zena Cardman andStephanie Wilson. Cardman and Gorbunov will be on their first spaceflight. Wilson spent 42 days in space across three orbital missions, most recently aboard space shuttle Discovery mission STS-131 in April 2010.

Crew-9 will be the ninth operational mission for SpaceX under NASA's commercial crew program and will spend about six months in space. The next ISS flight with SpaceX, Crew-8, is expected to launch to the ISS no earlier than Feb. 22, NASA also announced Wednesday.

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Space Force Guardian to reach orbit for 1st time on SpaceX's Crew-9 astronaut launch - Space.com

The U.S. military is considering commandeering SpaceX's reusable Starship rocket for dangerous or sensitive missions.

The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) has reached out to SpaceX to inquire about using Starship on its own, flying the massive rocket as a "government-owned, government-operated" asset on "sensitive and potentially dangerous missions," according to a recent report in Aviation Week.

Currently, the DOD contracts SpaceX as a launch services provider; in this new proposed arrangement the Pentagon would actually take control of the vehicle on its own.

Related: Space is now 'most essential' domain for US military, Pentagon says

Aviation Week cites comments made on Tuesday (Jan. 30) by Gary Henry, a Senior Advisor for National Security Space Solutions at SpaceX, during the 2024 Space Mobility Conference held in Orlando, Florida.

"We have had conversations and it really came down to specific missions, where it's a very specific and sometimes elevated risk or maybe a dangerous use case for the DOD where theyre asking themselves: 'Do we need to own it as a particular asset SpaceX, can you accommodate that?'" Henry said at the conference.

"We've been exploring all kinds of options to kind of deal with those questions," Henry added.

The DOD has been considering using Starship for years. As early as 2020, U.S. Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM) was discussing using the giant reusable rocket which is not yet operational for transporting cargo or even personnel rapidly around the world.

"Think about moving the equivalent of a C-17 payload anywhere on the globe in less than an hour. Think about that speed associated with the movement of transportation of cargo and people," former commander of USTRANSCOM Gen. Stephen Lyons said in Oct. 2020. "There is a lot of potential here, and I'm really excited about the team that's working with SpaceX on an opportunity, even perhaps, as early as '21, to be conducting a proof of principle."

Col. Eric Felt, director of space architecture for the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration, added that "there might be some use cases where there needs to be a government-owned, government-operated [vehicle], and that transfer can happen on the fly," Aviation Week reports.

SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has even hinted at using Starship to send 1,000 human passengers on point-to-point flights around the world at hypersonic speeds held in place by amusement-park-like restraints. "Would feel similar to Space Mountain in a lot of ways, but you'd exit on another continent," Musk wrote on X in 2019.

Aside from potential U.S. military applications and its traditional usage as a commercial launch vehicle, Starship is being tapped for NASA's Artemis program. The agency plans to use Starship as a moon lander to ferry human crews to and from the lunar surface, beginning with the Artemis 3 mission no earlier than 2026.

A lot of development and testing has to go right before that can happen, though. SpaceX will first have to conduct a successful demonstration in which Starship will be used as an orbital refueling platform to top off a human lander after it uses most of its fuel after it leaves Earth and heads to the moon.

Starship is SpaceX's next-generation launch vehicle that the company hopes will help humanity build settlements on the moon and Mars. The massive rocket has flown on two test flights to date; one in April 2023 and again in November 2023. A third test flight could come as soon as February 2024, pending regulatory approval from the U.S. government.

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US military eyes SpaceX Starship for 'sensitive and potentially dangerous missions': report - Space.com

Enlarge / An artist's concept of the Starlab space station.

Starlab LLC

The Starlab commercial space station will launch on SpaceX's Starship rocket, officials said this week.

Starlab is a joint venture between the US-based Voyager Space and the European-based multinational aerospace corporation Airbus. The venture is building a large station with a habitable volume equivalent to half the pressurized volume of the International Space Station and will launch the new station no earlier than 2028.

"SpaceX's history of success and reliability led our team to select Starship to orbit Starlab," Dylan Taylor, chairman and CEO of Voyager Space, said in a statement. "SpaceX is the unmatched leader for high-cadence launches and we are proud Starlab will be launched to orbit in a single flight by Starship."

Starlab will have a diameter of about 26 feet (8 meters). It is perhaps not a coincidence that Starship's payload bay can accommodate vehicles up to 26 feet across in its capacious fairing. However, in an interview, Marshall Smith, the chief technology officer of Voyager Space, said the company looked at a couple of launch options.

"We looked at multiple launches to get Starlab into orbit, and eventually gravitated toward single launch options," he said. "It saves a lot of the cost of development. It saves a lot of the cost of integration. We can get it all built and checked out on the ground, and tested and launch it with payloads and other systems. One of the many lessons we learned from the International Space Station is that building and integrating in space is very expensive."

With a single launch on a Starship, the Starlab module should be ready for human habitation almost immediately, Smith said.

Starlab LLC

Starlab is one of several privately developed space stations vying to become a commercial replacement for the International Space Station, which NASA is likely to retire in 2030. Among the other contenders are Axiom Space, Blue Origin, and Vast Space. SpaceX may also configure a human-rated version of Starship as a temporary space station.

NASA has provided seed funding to some of these companies, including Voyager Space, to begin designing and developing their stations. NASA is expected to hold a second round of competition next year, when it will select one or more companies to proceed with building and testing their stations.

Each company is developing a space station that will serve both government customersNASA wants to continue flying at least a handful of astronauts in low-Earth orbit for research purposesas well as private customers. The challenge for Starlab and other commercial stations is developing a customer base beyond NASA to support the expense of flying and operating stations.

The challenge is a huge one: NASA spent more than $100 billion constructing the International Space Station and has a $3 billion annual budget for operations and transportation of people and supplies to the station. The agency is likely to fund commercial space stations at a level of about $1 billion a year, so these companies must build their facilities relatively quickly at low costand then find a diverse base of customers to offset expenses.

Starlab may have an advantage in this regard with its co-ownership by Airbus. One of the big questions surrounding the end of the International Space Station is what happens to the European astronauts who fly there now. The European Space Agency will likely be reticent about funding missions to private space stations owned and operated by US companies. The involvement by Airbus, therefore, makes Starlab attractive to European nations as a destination.

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Starlabwith half the volume of the ISSwill fit inside Starship's payload bay - Ars Technica