This week the Space Explored team unpack’s NASA’s unexpected SLS Green Run hot fire test ending, the latest status update on SpaceX’s Starship SN9 flight plans, this week in Space Coast launches, and much more.
After the SLS Core Stage hot fire test that aborted just over a minute into the test, it was uncertain what objectives were met and if they would need to do a second test fire. During the second press conference Tuesday afternoon, concerns arose about the Core Stage reaching its cryo-cycling limit before the launch but today NASA shares the Core Stage and Artemis 1 timeline may be in better shape than first thought.
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Still in the afterglow of Blue Origin’s 14th flight of its New Shepard rocket, Jeff Bezos’ space tourism venture is planning another suborbital rocket launch to keep the momentum going in 2021. According to reports, these next missions could be some of the biggest in the company’s history.
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Friday morning SpaceX plans to launch their first dedicated ridesharing mission. Ahead of the launch, one of the Sentinel-2 Earth-observing satellites conveniently passed over the landing zone for the mission while showing SpaceX’s fleet ready to perform their rocket-catching duties.
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Rocket Lab kicked off their 2021 mission schedule with a dedicated launch of a communication satellite for OHB Group into a polar orbit. The Electron rocket lifted off early Wednesday, January 20, from their launch complex in New Zealand.
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This week the FAA gave approval to Space Florida to be able to operate space reentry operations at NASA’s Shuttle Landing Facility in Kennedy Space Center. This will allow for commercial operations to take place at the runway for commercial companies.
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NASA released a statement this week detailing information about some of the findings that contributed to the early shutdown of the Artemis 1 Core Stage during the Green Run Hot Fire test on Saturday. The test was originally supposed to last about 8 minutes, but ended up only lasting 67.2 seconds, far short of the minimum amount of time needed to certify the core.
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Buzz Aldrin, the second man to step foot on the Moon, received his first COVID-19 vaccine dose on Tuesday and urges others to do the same when it’s available to them.
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Remember when SpaceX’s Starship SN9 was supposed to be a quick static fire then 12.5 km hop? Yeah, seems like that is fully out the window for this vehicle at least. Another week went by full of hope to see a flight by the end of the week, but again we are back to waiting for a static fire to be completed.
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Virgin Orbit attempted its second demonstration launch on Sunday after their first attempt failed shortly after the first stage ignition last year. This time around they didn’t just launch a mass simulator but actual payloads from NASA’s Educational Launch of Nanosatellites program ElaNa 20 which contained several CubeSats from universities across the nation.
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Space Explored’s Zac Hall and Seth Kurkowski are joined by the amazing Austin Barnard to discuss the latest with SpaceX’s Starship SN9 test flight, preview NASA’s Space Launch System Green Run test, Blue Origin’s recent New Shepard NS-14 mission, and more.
Signed on the 45th anniversary of the final crewed mission to the Moon, Space Policy Directive 1 directed NASA to begin a mission to send the next man and first woman to the Moon with a pathway to continue onto the crewed exploration of Mars. Since then, the Artemis program has expanded to include already existing programs as well as new commercialized contracts for new services.
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NASA’s InSight lander was launched back in 2018 from Vandenberg Air Force Base on an Atlas V rocket and was the first interplanetary mission from California. The lander made it safely to the surface of Mars on November 26, carrying new experiments to learn more about Mars subsurface science.
The two big experiments that took the ride to the Red Planet were a seismometer and “self-hammering nail” to study the thermal properties below the surface of Mars nicknamed “the mole”. The mole ran into problems almost right away after it was lifted off the top of the lander and placed on the ground in late 2019.
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After a week of attempting to conduct a second static fire following what we believed was an off-nominal test last week. SpaceX pushed SN9 in their testing and conducted not just 1 but 3 static fires over the course of the day.
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This Saturday NASA and their contractors are planning on conducting the final Green Run test for NASA’s Artemis-1 core stage of the Space Launch System rocket. This will be the only time the stage will be fired for a full 8 minutes before its flight.
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NASA has had the goal over the years to grow the commercial space market by moving design, development, and operations of spacecraft over to commercial partners rather than the government agency. Instead of NASA being the only place for researchers to go for getting payloads to space, NASA has become more of a customer of commercial spacecraft providers
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After a year of a long testing campaign, NASA and Boeing at Stennis Space Center are ready to conduct the final test for the Space Launch System core stage before it is handed over to the launch team at Kennedy Space Center.
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After being pushed back on Monday due to bad weather in its primary Atlantic Ocean landing zone, SpaceX’s CRS-21 Dragon cargo capsule successfully undocked from the International Space Station this morning. This follows a change to its primary splashdown point to the other side of Florida.
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SpaceX CRS-21 has completed its mission to the International Space Station after launching from Kennedy Space Center in early December. Its next mission is to return cargo from the station back to NASA sometime this week.
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With a very eventful year in the wraps, we expect a lot of companies to make big moves in space this year. Across the decade, many startups have worked tirelessly to get their business on the ground by developing new launchers and spacecraft to disrupt the industry. As we look to the year ahead, a major theme in 2021 will be the ultimate tests of many of these new advancements in space. These are the stories we’re following throughout the year:
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SpaceX successfully completed its TurkSat-5A mission after launching from Space Launch Complex 40 on Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Thursday night. This marks the first launch of 2021 and SpaceX’s 50th launch using flight proven boosters.
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For over a year, SpaceX has been developing its next-generation rocket Starship near the small neighborhood of Boca Chica Village in Texas near the Mexican border. It wasn’t until June of last year that the Federal Aviation Administration which licenses airspace started an environmental assessment of the rapid expansion of SpaceX facilities there.
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Updated January 7th 8:18 PM with details from ExoLaunch tweet.
SpaceX has been planning dedicated ridesharing launches with their first planned to take place later this month, but it might be going with two fewer payloads. Two of DARPA’s payloads that were planned to launch on the missions are apparently now damaged.
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SpinLaunch is a company founded in 2014 to develop a new way to launch payloads into space. Now they are expanding their team and facilities at Spaceport America in New Mexico to be able to test-launch their first suborbital flight.
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