Daily Archives: February 5, 2024

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/

Get the latest from NASA delivered every week. Subscribe here:www.nasa.gov/subscribe

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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.

Excerpt from:

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

NASAs Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) observatory is inspected and processed on a spacecraft dolly in a high bay at the Astrotech Space Operations Facility near the agencys Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday, Dec. 4, 2023 Photo: NASA

SpaceX and NASA are planning to launch a Falcon 9 from SLC-40 NET Tuesday morning at 1:33 AM EST. Weather may be a concern: the 45th Weather Squadron has yet to issue a Probability of Violation forecast, but the National Weather Service and other general forecast products are calling for a good chance of wind and rain at the planned launch time.

The payload for the mission is NASAs PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) satellite. It isan Earth-observing instrument that will conduct observations of global ocean color, biogeochemistry, and ecology, as well as the carbon cycle, aerosols as well as as clouds.

According to NASA, PACEs data will help us better understand how the ocean and atmosphere exchange carbon dioxide. In addition, it will reveal how aerosols might fuel phytoplankton growth in the surface ocean. Novel uses of PACE data will benefit our economy and society. For example, it will help identify the extent and duration of harmful algal blooms. PACE will extend and expand NASAs long-term observations of our living planet. By doing so, it will take Earths pulse in new ways for decades to come.

Until the 45th Weather Squadron releases their official launch forecast, heres the general weather forecast. Note that this forecast does not consider rocket launch weather criteria and should be used only for a very general look ahead:

Monday Night: A 40 percent chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 56. Windy, with a north northwest wind 15 to 25 mph, with gusts as high as 30 mph.

Tuesday: A 40 percent chance of showers. Partly sunny, with a high near 65. Windy, with a north wind 25 to 30 mph, with gusts as high as 40 mph.

Stay tuned, we will replace old forecasts with new ones as they become available.

Trajectory will be south, with the final destination being a Sun-synchronous orbit.

This will be an RTLS (Return To Launch Site) mission. Space Coast residents can expect a sonic boom to spread through the area after 1:42 AM. Remember that sound travels about five miles per second, so the exact time for the sonic booms arrival is dependent on your locations distance to LZ-1.

SpaceX has not yet identified which booster that will be used for this flight. Talk of Titusville will add more information when it becomes available.

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NASA, SpaceX To Launch PACE Earth Science Satellite Early Tuesday - Talk of Titusville