Space @ interstellar news

SpaceX Starship prototype destroyed after static-fire test WASHINGTON — A SpaceX Starship prototype was destroyed in an explosion May 29 shortly after what initially appeared to be a successful static-fire test. The Starship SN4 vehicle had just completed a static-fire test at SpaceX’s test site at Boca Chica, Texas, when it was enveloped in a fireball that appeared to emanate from the base of the vehicle at 2:49 p.m. Eastern. The vehicle was destroyed in the test, but there were no reports of injuries. The area around the launch site is evacuated before such tests. The explosion took place about two minutes after a static-fire test of a single Raptor engine in the base of the vehicle. The engine fired for several seconds and there were no immediate signs of problems after the engine shut down. In the seconds just before the explosion, though, there was extensive venting at the base of the vehicle not seen in previous tests. SpaceX appeared to be moving toward the first free flight of ...

BlackSky secures $50 million financing from Intelsat The senior secured loan will help fund BlackSky’s infrastructure and product development. WASHINGTON — Geospatial data provider BlackSky announced Nov. 12 it has secured a $50 million loan from global communications satellite operator Intelsat. The senior secured loan will finance BlackSky’s infrastructure and product development for commercial and government customers, BlackSky CEO Brian O’Toole told  SpaceNews . In addition to the financing deal, O’Toole said, BlackSky and Intelsat are establishing a commercial partnership to jointly develop data and imagery products to be distributed via Intelsat’s communications services. BlackSky is part of Spaceflight Industries, based in Seattle. The company is in the process of expanding its constellation of small satellites that revisit a given location several times per day. Four 1-meter resolution imaging satellites are in service today and 20 more are in production. The new capital wi...

Intelsat asks bankruptcy to clear roadblock for Spaceflight launch business sale WASHINGTON — Intelsat is asking its bankruptcy court for authorization to modify a $50 million loan to Spaceflight Industries’ Earth-observation business BlackSky that could become a snag in Spaceflight’s sale of its launch rideshare business.  Intelsat signed the BlackSky loan Oct. 31,  about two weeks before it was publicly announced , according to a bankruptcy document. That same day Mitsui & Co. loaned Spaceflight Industries a separate $26 million with an eye toward acquiring its launch rideshare business.  In February Mitsui announced it was buying that business with Yamasa Co., Ltd., who will own it in a 50/50 joint venture. Intelsat and Mitsui signed an intercreditor agreement where each company used part of Spaceflight Industries as collateral — Spaceflight’s launch and mission control business by Mitsui and Spaceflight’s BlackSky business by Intelsat. That agreement and others be...

Rocket Lab to resume launches in June WASHINGTON — Rocket Lab will resume launches of its Electron small launch vehicle in June as the effects of the coronavirus pandemic ease at its New Zealand launch site. The company announced May 28 it has rescheduled an Electron launch for June 11 local time from its launch site on New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula. That launch was previously scheduled for March 30  but postponed because of a lockdown imposed by the New Zealand government in response to the pandemic . The launch, called “Don’t Stop Me Now” by the company, has the same set of payloads as what the company originally announced in March. That includes three unidentified payloads for the National Reconnaissance Office, the ANDESITE (Ad-hoc Network Demonstration for Extended Satellite-based Inquiry and other Team Endeavors) cubesat built by students at Boston University and whose launch was arranged by NASA, and M2 Pathfinder built by the University of New South Wales Canberra. The anno...

Commercial crew astronauts accept risks of test flight WASHINGTON — The astronauts who will fly the first Crew Dragon mission say they understand and accept the risks of a new spacecraft, which they believe can’t be boiled down to a single number. NASA’s commercial crew program set a number of safety requirements for the spacecraft whose development it supported. Among them was a “loss-of-crew” figure of merit — a measure of the probability of death or permanent disability of one or more people on a spacecraft during a mission — of 1 in 270. Achieving that requirement proved difficult for both Boeing and SpaceX, a point raised in a number of meetings of the agency’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel. “The number one safety-related concern for the program is the current situation with respect to the estimate of loss of crew,” Donald McErlean said  at a 2017 meeting of the panel . Both NASA and the two companies said since then that they have made progress on vehicle improvements and o...

A first-of-its-kind asteroid thrilled astronomers. But it was just a comet fraud. For a week, it was a truly stunning crumb of the solar system — until scientists realized it was just a  dirty hunk of ice  with an identity crisis. The twisted tale revolves around a surprising, dusty tail spotted among a clump of distant space rocks. And it begins in Hawaii, with a program called the  Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System, or ATLAS . ATLAS is a serious project with its sights on more existential solar system mysteries than identity fraud. Every night, its two observatories perched on Hawaiian peaks survey the sky, watching for anything that moves against the background of stars. The goal is to  spot any large space rocks  that may collide with Earth as soon as possible, so humans have more time to try to fend off a possible apocalypse. But it turns out there are way more objects moving in the sky than there are collision-course  asteroids , which mea...

NASA awards Planet $7 million Earth imagery contract Updated 12:30 pm Eastern time with comment from Jen Marcus of Planet Federal. SAN FRANCISCO – NASA employees, contractors and NASA-funded research teams will have access to Planet Earth observation imagery under a $7 million contract option the San Francisco company announced April 16. “We have unlimited access to all PlanetScope data,” Kevin Murphy, program executive for NASA’s Earth Science Data System, told  SpaceNews. “ We found the greatest value in the global three-meter data.” NASA  announced plans to purchase Earth observation data  from Maxar Technologies, Planet and Spire in 2018 as part of a pilot program to evaluate the utility of commercial data. The space agency determined the imagery was valuable but sometimes  struggled with licenses  that prevented some types of data sharing and publication of research. NASA bought Planet  imagery for a climate research  pilot program under a $6...

NASA taps Airbus for commercial satellite data buy SAN FRANCISCO – NASA intends to gain access to Earth observation data gathered by Airbus Defence and Space satellites through the Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition Program (CSDAP). NASA plans “to enter into a sole source Blanket Purchase Agreement with Airbus Defence and Space GEO Inc. … for unique commercial optical and radar satellite imagery,” according to a notice posted May 6 on Beta.Sam.Gov, the federal acquisition website. NASA established a pilot program in 2017  to evaluate how Earth observation data  from commercial small-satellite constellations could support space agency research and applications. Once the pilot program proved the utility of the commercial observations, NASA created CSDAP, an ongoing initiative to purchase commercial Earth observation data. Currently, Maxar Technologies, Planet, Spire Global and Teledyne Brown Engineering are under contract to provide imagery and data to NASA-funded researchers....

Weather primary concern for Demo-2 launch WASHINGTON — NASA and SpaceX officials said after a final pre-launch review they had no major issues about the upcoming Demo-2 commercial crew launch beyond one over which they have no control: the weather. NASA concluded a launch readiness review May 25 for the Demo-2 mission, the final pre-launch review for a mission that will send NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station on the first crewed flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft. That review, officials said during a media telecon after the review, found no major technical issues with the spacecraft or its Falcon 9 rocket. “All the teams are go,” said Kathy Lueders, NASA commercial crew program manager. “Now the only thing we need to do is figure out how to control the weather.” Forecasts published over the last three days have been pessimistic, with only a 40% chance of acceptable weather for the launch at 4:33 p.m. Eastern May 27. Mike McAleenan, lau...

SpaceX, NASA give final 'go' for historic astronaut launch Wednesday But there's a 40% chance of bad launch weather. SpaceX is officially "go" to launch two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station this week after mission teams completed the final launch readiness review on Monday (May 25). But some bad weather could potentially cause delays.  NASA  and  SpaceX  convened at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida on Monday to go over last-minute launch preparations in the final review before the big day. If all goes according to plan — and if the weather cooperates — SpaceX's Crew Dragon will lift off on a Falcon 9 rocket from the center's historic Launch Complex 39A on Wednesday (May 27) at 4:33 p.m. EDT (2033 GMT).  "We had a really good successful launch Readiness Review and we go for launch," Hans Koenigsmann vice president of Build and Flight Reliability at SpaceX, said in a briefing after the launch readiness review.  On board t...

Other voices: A crowd in space: Tens of thousands of satellites planned for orbit Space, that final frontier, could become very crowded very soon. There are an estimated 2,200 satellites orbiting the Earth at present, but telecommunications companies are launching dozens of new satellites regularly in hopes of providing high-speed broadband internet access to the entire planet. Just how many satellites are we talking about? London-based OneWeb planned to launch nearly 400 this year and ultimately have 650 in place. Elon Musk’s SpaceX has put 240 into orbit since last spring and could have 1,000 more launched by the end of the year. The company hopes to deploy as many as 42,000 satellites for its Starlink internet system. Not to be left out of the game, Amazon plans to create its own space-based internet system, Project Kuiper, with the launch of more than 3,000 satellites. That’s a lot of satellites that could fill the skies over the next decade. Now would be the time for the formation...